A Brief History of the Bearfight: Who Created the Greatest Drink Ever Told?

I consider myself a man of science, and in the spirit of Galileo and Darwin, I too am trying to find a source, a baseline where something first came into existence.  It’s like following the ripples back to the stone, only I’m not searching for the birth of the universe or the first living organism.  No, I’m looking for something much bigger, much more important to all of us.  I’m looking for the origin of the greatest drink ever told: the bearfight.

For those of you that don’t already know, the bearfight is a drink that demands physical strength, mental fortitude, sheer stupidity, and utter genius just to swallow it, and then swallow again.  You’ve probably had a jaegar bomb before, and you’ve probably had a car bomb before, but throw them down back to back, and you’ve got yourself a bearfight.

Now, finding out just how the bearfight was born, from whose lips it was first uttered, is like trying to find out who started that rumor that Screech was dead.  We all heard it, we all repeated it, but who said it first?  Because whoever said it first was a damn genius.  But seriously, he really is dead now.

Anyway, the answer to the origin of the bearfight is a little simpler because I know the guy who invented it.  Or, at least, I know a guy who knows the guy that invented it.  Either way, that guy is William Noyes (pronounced “Noise”) Palmer.  You might be wondering why we all should trust the source, and that’s a fair question, but to anyone that knows this man and has ever seen him drink, the proof is in the pudding that was vomited up after finishing 2 handles of aristocrat vodka in just a few hours.  Your source for that story?  Me.  I saw it with my own eyes, and it was glorious.

William Noyes Palmer: A Potent Potable

Mr. Palmer is deceptively tolerant when it comes to alcohol.  Although an intimidating 6′ 6″, he weighs a mere 150 pounds, so the real magic is how his system handles such a high volume of toxic liquid, whereby the stomach acts as a single-chambered pump that pushes alcohol through the blood stream to the upper and lower extremities, diluting its effects.  It really is a marvel of evolution.  Darwinism at its best, should survival be based on number of alcoholic beverages consumed in a single evening.

Recently I was invited to speak with Mr. Palmer about the bearfight and his involvement in the creation and proliferation of the drink.  We sat down in Palmer’s hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia – after having spent the night drinking – and set out in search of the drink’s etymology.  What follows is a transcript of our discussion.

RM: Alright, Noyes.  I want to know when you first came up with the bearfight.

WNP: I’m gonna say I never came up with the bearfight.  If I had to give myself a title, it’d probably be Chief Marketing Officer.

RM: Ok, “CMO”, where did all this originate?  Who had the first bearfight?  Who was the first person to follow a jaegar bomb with a car bomb and say, yeah, I call that a bearfight?

WNP: Chris Stewart is the originator of the bearfight as far as I’m aware.  He went to Penn State.  He came to Atlanta – we were at Moondog’s – and we’re like, let’s take a shot.  And he was like, I have the perfect shot.  And we asked, well, what is it?  And he said it’s a bearfight.

RM: So he had already come up with the bearfight.

WNP: The name.

RM: But this was the first time you’d heard about it. The first time you heard “bearfight” was when you actually drank one.

WNP: Mm hmm.

RM: Someone had already come up with it.

WNP: Chris Stewart

RM: Ok, but where did he get that from?

WNP: I’m 100% positive that he made it up.

RM: You know, honestly, I’m a little skeptical, and let me tell you why.  When I was in high school, I told everyone that Screech was dead.

WNP: Dustin Diamond?

RM: Yeah.  Exactly.  And the only reason I said that was because my stepmother said to me, Screech is dead.  The only reason she said that, is because one of her students said that. Who knows how far back it goes, how many degrees of separation lay between myself and the first mutterings of Screech’s untimely passing.  You see where I’m going with this?  You’re telling me you know the guy who told everybody that Screech was dead.  Hard to believe.

WNP: I understand where you’re coming from, but he registered for the domain name – bearfight.com, and bearfight.net – and he took it a little too seriously to not be involved.

RM: Is it possible for me to get in touch with him?  And talk with him about the bearfight?

WNP: Yes. It’s definitely possible.

RM: Because, I’ll tell you what, I really like the story that you invented the bearfight.

WNP: Yeah, but I don’t feel comfortable throwing that one out there.  I would say I’m responsible for the proliferation of the bearfight.  I’d definitely agree with that because I took it a little bit further than he did, and when I say a little bit, I mean a lot.

RM: How so?

WNP: The first night, on our second bearfight when he was vomiting the car bomb back into the cup, I was like, do it again.  Fill that shit back up and do it again.  It’s when I fell in love with the bearfight. From that point on, my whole life has been about the bearfight.  Taking bearfights.  Yelling at other people to “nut up” and take another bearfight.  You know that episode of Southpark where Russell Crowe is fighting?  He’s like, fighting his way across the U.S. in a tugboat and  he’s…[some inconclusive speech here, slurred words and whatnot].

RM: The fighting cancer episode?

WNP: Yeah.  So, he’s like, fighting with his tugboat, and I’m fighting people.  I’m bearfighting people.

RM: Are you drinking this drink to somehow save humanity?  From itself?

WNP: That’s my goal

RM: Wow.  That’s a lofty goal.

WNP: I don’t know if I can get there by drinking bearfights, but I’m going to try.

RM: Well then, tell me a little bit about the Bear Grylls.

WNP: The Bear Grylls was definitely 3746 Wieuca Road Atlanta Georgia 303423H. [That's Palmer's home address.  I'm not sure why he added an extra number and a letter to the zip code though].  It comes from drinking bearfights – at least 3 a weekend – and just not feeling challenged anymore.  The bearfight just got too easy.  I mean, I’ve probably taken close to 500.  Once you get to that point, you’re looking for the next challenge.  And so was born the Bear Grylls.

RM: Which is?

WNP: A jaegar bomb followed by a car bomb followed by a sake bomb.  It’s disgusting, just like when Bear Grylls eats some shit on T.V., some mammal flesh with the fur still on it, some giant bug with its guts oozing out, some fresh water fish that has its spinal column crunched by Grylls’ forceful bite.  But whatever he’s doing, you’re pretty interested.

RM: That’s absolutely true.  Let me ask you this then: What comes after the Bear Grylls?

WNP: I don’t know yet.  I don’t know that anyone besides myself has ever taken a Bear Grylls.  I mean, I’ve been talking about it for the past two months,  but where do you go that you can get jaegar, redbull, bailey’s, jameson, guiness, and sake and saporo?  Where do you go?  You tell me because I don’t know any bar where you can get all that stuff.

RM: Alright, let’s get back on the road here.  You weren’t the first person to come up with the term “bearfight”, and you can’t assure me that the person you think is the first person to come up with the term “bearfight” is actually the first person.

WNP: I would go out on a limb and say he is the originator.

RM: No, no.  Let’s not go out on any limbs.  Limbs are unstable.  We’re looking for grounded evidence.  Nothing circumstantial.  I’m going to need to speak with him personally.

WNP: Chris Stewart.  Call him.  But I would say I’m solely responsible for spreading it throughout the southeast.

RM: Oh, there’s no question that you are a great marketing strategist.  There are thousands of people that would never even have heard of a bearfight if it wasn’t for you.

WNP:  Without me, you wouldn’t hear the great stories of people being together and saying, yeah, I was in Snowshoe, West Virginia, and I looked across the bar and a guy ordered a couple of bearfights and I said, what’s that?

RM: But I want to know who that guy was.

WNP: That ordered the bearfights?

RM: Yeah.

WNP: Some random dude.  I don’t know.

RM: We’re looking for the origin though.  This guy might be able to tell you where he heard about it, and maybe we can trace it back.

WNP:  He was from Atlanta.

RM: The guy in West Virginia?

WNP: Yeah.  I went over and talked to him.  He lived in Atlanta two years prior and that’s where he heard about it.  And that’s all me.  I made that happen.

RM: Our goal is still to find the person who said: jaegar bomb followed by car bomb equals bearfight.

WNP: I think the original purpose of the bearfight was not a jaegar bomb followed by a car bomb, but a grizzly bear and a panda bear fighting in your stomach.  The grizzly bear would obviously be the car bomb and the panda bear would be the jaegar bomb.  I don’t understand how you could not know that.

RM: Of course.  It makes perfect sense. [Note: I am totally confused here]

WNP: Really, when you break it down to the grizzly bear and the panda bear, we’re talking about the origins of the bearfight.

RM: Grizzlies and Pandas should fight regularly.  They should battle it out.

WNP: In your stomach.

RM: Or in a steel-caged ring.  Fucking Panda would get his ass kicked.  Stupid pieces of shit.  Why the fuck would you choose the most non-nourishing food as the center of your diet?  Bamboo.  You sit around all day and eat bamboo just to get enough nourishment not to die.  You can barely procreate.  If you have more than one offspring, you abandon all the rest because you can’t produce enough nutrients in the milk to feed them all and have some left over for yourself.  You have no coordination.  You regularly fall 20 or 30 feet out of a tree branch.  And yet you want everyone to feel sorry for you because you’re almost extinct.  Maybe you deserve to be you dumb fuck.

WNP: Are you upset?

RM: Sorry.  A little.  So, Christ Stewart.  Inventor.  But you are still one of the first people to speak of the bearfight.

WNP: Yeah.

RM: Give me a little back story on Mr. Stewart.

WNP: He transfered from Penn State after his first year.  To UVA.  He dates that really little girl, Liz.

RM: Is she a midget?  By definition?

WNP: Well, I’m not trying to call you a midget.

RM: I’m 5′ 10″, asshole.

WNP: In heels?

RM: This interview is over.  And so is our friendship.