I Dislike Your Favorite Team

On Thursday night, Mike Zimmerman became the 4th winner in the 2nd season of Pros vs. Joes. In our review of the episode, we called Mike a douchebag. Yet, gracious winner that he was, he was still willing to sit down and answer a few of our questions.

Before we get to the interview, I have a personal issue to resolve with Spike TV. You guys are fucking dicks! In Season 1, each winner won $20,000. For a one-off reality competition, that seemed like a fair cash prize. We all know (well, those of who read about this shit for no good reason) that reality shows are pretty cheap to produce. So, it took maybe the second episode of Season 2 for me to realize that I wasn't hearing about the prize money anymore. I've done some research, and contacted my many sources in the Pro V. Joe network, and it has been confirmed--They Took the Prize Money Away. Spike TV, you are a bunch of dicks! We will be following up with our network of sources to find out when the Joes found out about this bullhonky change. And Spike TV, if you ran auditions for Season 2 without telling the Joes participating that the prize money was being phased out, than you are even bigger dicks that I thought. Lame, Spike TV, lame.

OK, to our interview...Ladies (well, whatever) and Gentle Men--Mike Zimmerman!

As I said in my review of your episode, I didn't catch where you from, but I did catch the fact that you are the still the all-time leading tackler for your high school football team. Where did you play high school football? Position?

I am from San Marcos Ca, North county San Diego. I went to San Marcos High. I played middle linebacker in HS, and also in college at the University of San Diego.

Was football your main sport, or did you play others?

In High School I played football, baseball, and basketball, where I started in all three. I wanted to play college baseball as well but one sport in college was quite enough.

When you tackled Andre Reed, did you think to yourself "Holy Shit, I just tackled Andre Reed!"? What did that feel like?

When I was playing the sports I was focused on winning, I have played against a lot of people in my life, and I have personally played against at least 15 NFL guys in my career, so he was just another guy to me, I mean it was really cool that it was Andre, but once we were on the field it did not matter who I was going against. I was thinking we were going to win $20,000 like last year, so I was all business….It felt great to tackle Reed, if I didn’t I would have got a lot of shit from all of my friends!!!

Was it your strategy in the Fielding Strawberry Event to take your time, and make sure you hit targets? Were you doggin' it?

Ok this is something that a lot of people have asked me about, and like you had not known that we filmed for two whole days, it was kinda that same thing. The drill was to field the ball, only if Darryl hit the ball in the little pie. So he really hit us like 50 balls, so I did not want to be tired when the name of the game was accuracy. It was all strategy for me to be fresh when I was throwing the balls.

Do you think that was the difference between you winning this event and Bosler losing it? Because it seemed to me he rushed his throws. It also occurred to me that since it wasn't a timed event, that you could really take your time, and set yourself up for a good throw.

Really Mark just did not have a great arm, he went 0 for 10, but they did not show that, and I really went 6-10. Oh, and the first basketball event was really different than how it looked! But we can get in to that later. Also I knew after I had beat Mark, I had to beat Church in four events, so I could not run my self ragged for 20 minutes!!! Lastly let me say this, in reply to your comment in the story, I told Mark that I was going to beat Church head to head after I knocked him out. [editor's note: The Z-Man is referring to my suggestion in my wrap-up that both he and Church thought that Church was the favorite] I never felt like I was the underdog, I felt like I was the heavy favorite, and I never trailed in Overtime.

Is Spud Webb as country as he sounded? I mean, "Hunting bear with a switch" isn't a phrase I hear very often.

To tell you the truth they kept us very separate from the pros, well at least in my first show, so we never really got to talk much, but at the end all of the guys were really cool.. But he did not seem too country to me.

[Editor’s note: I did not mean country to be an insulting thing. I just meant in relation to regular trash-talking, Spud used some odd phrases. Like he was a cowboy, or something]


Was Andre Reed as bad as shit-talking as he seemed? I mean, I heard tougher cracks in 8th grade.

Well also with the editing everyone talked about 100X's the shit that was really on the show, and after every event both the Pros and Joes got interviewed, but none of that made the shows. Reed was cool to me, I thought it was funny hearing them talk shit, but I hear a lot more shit talking from my friends when we play flag football, or softball. I play/coach on one of the best flag football teams in California.

Your episode wasn't heavy on hard contact (compared to episodes that featured Kevin Willis, or Randy Couture, or Herschel Walker). Was taking a soccer ball in the Nards the most painful thing you experienced?

The soccer balls did suck, and that was the toughest thing that we had to do. But we did not pick the episodes that we did, we did not even know the event until we got out there to do it. I would have liked to do the Randy episode, I do MMA [Editors note: That's Mixed Martial Arts, for all you pussies out there] so I would have liked to see if I could have won that event. And I would have loved to tackle Dickerson like [Episode 3 winner] Rodney. Overall it was a great experience.


Thanks to The Z-Man for answering our questions. We feel kind of bad calling him a douchebag. Though he is one cocky son-of-a-bitch. If you, dear readers, have any questions for the Z-Man, you can add them in the comments, or email . He's agreed to answer any and all.