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Zimmerman Will Fight DMX, Because Charity

by Jenny Hollander

In the next few weeks, George Zimmerman will go head-to-head with rapper DMX in a three-round charity boxing match. Yes, you read that right. Last week, promoter Damon Feldman announced that he'd signed up Zimmerman, Florida's notorious acquitted murderer turned alleged domestic abuser turned gym bunny, and was hunting for an opponent. Rapper The Game volunteered ("I will beat the f--- out of him,") along with rapper DMX and roughly 15,000 others, according to Feldman. The promoter picked DMX.

And we're inclined to put our money on DMX. The New York-born rapper, real name Earl Simmons, is routinely listed as one of America's most-arrested celebrities, and at 5''11 has four inches on Zimmerman. And he's made no secret of his contempt for Zimmerman: "I am going to beat the living f--- out him," he told TMZ. "I am breaking every rule in boxing to make sure I f--- him right up."

"Once I am done with him," added DMX, "I am going to whip my dick out and piss on him ... Right in his motherf---ing face. Zimmerman is a piece of shit and that’s what he needs to drink."

Right. At least we know what to expect.

Like The Game, DMX has sworn to beat Zimmerman on behalf of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old Zimmerman fatally shot last February. "For every black person who's been done wrong in the system," as DMX put it. Zimmerman was acquitted last summer of both the manslaughter and murder of the Florida teenager under the state's "Stand Your Ground" laws, a decision that sparked waves of outrage across America. In a sad coincidence, Martin would have turned 19 today.

Zimmerman gained more than 100 pounds in the run-up to his highly-publicized trial last summer, and told TMZ that he'd taken up boxing in an effort to drop the pounds. He's taken to calling Martin's death "the incident," as in: "Boxing isn’t new to me; it’s something I had picked up well before the incident." And: "Prior to the incident, I was actually going to the gym for weight loss and doing boxing-type training for weight loss."

Though DMX is 13 years older than Zimmerman — the rapper is 43, and Zimmerman is 30 — the rapper isn't the kind of person you want to square off with. He's been arrested more times than we can count, and the charges have included sodomy, animal cruelty, stabbing, drug possession, DUI, theft, assault, and identity falsification. He's fathered at least a dozen children with different women, and declared bankruptcy last year after struggling to pay child support.

At one point, according to the Daily Beast: "One of his notorious arrests occurred in 2004 when he allegedly crashed his SUV through a parking lot gate at New York's Kennedy airport after telling the security guard he was a government agent."

And Zimmerman? Well, he's obviously had his own serious run-ins with the law.

A jury acquitted Zimmerman of both manslaughter and murder last July, and both Zimmerman’s former girlfriend and former wife have since called 911, on separate occasions, and accused Zimmerman of pointing guns at them. After the Martin trial drew to a close, it was revealed that Zimmerman’s ex-fiancée had taken out a restraining order against him in 2005, alleging domestic abuse.
So what next for Zimmerman? Well, cashing in on his now-celebrity status, because, America. After amassing a small fortune selling his own works of art on eBay, it was pointed out to the gun-touting Floridian that two of his paintings had been copied from other people’s photographs — the Associated Press, in one instance, plus a Shutterstock image of an American flag — and a cease-and-desist letter from the AP prompted Zimmerman to take time out from his fledging art career.