Ahnold gets kicked in the back

Arnold Schwarzenegger is over 70, but he's still what the French would call costaud, i.e., bulky. While in South Africa to promote his @Arnoldsports program, Schwarzenegger was drop-kicked by some angry nutball. Arnold apparently got back up and kept doing what he was doing for the rest of his scheduled agenda. My buddy Mike reported that the kicker hurt his leg in striking Arnold; the attacker, shouting incoherently, was tackled by security and taken to police. Schwarzenegger got on Twitter to say he didn't initially realize he'd been kicked because crowds jostle him all the time. He added that he would not be pressing charges. He hoped the attacker would get his life together, and finally, Arnold urged his fans to focus on the athletes at the event, not on the attack.

Arnold's a classy guy. Lesser men would scream and roll around like drama-queen soccer players, then shriek about bringing the full force of the law down on their attackers.

When I saw the video, my first reaction was, "That's not a drop kick: that's one of those funky, WWE-style flying double kicks." Well, it turns out that, in the WWE, the attacker's kick is indeed called a drop kick (or "dropkick"), even though it involves nothing that drops. A typical drop kick involves lifting one knee very high, then swiftly dropping that knee while doing a front kick with the opposite leg. In sports that use balls, a drop kick involves literally dropping the ball into the path of your already-moving kicking leg, as in rugby. Either way, a drop kick normally involves something dropping. The kick executed against Arnold, despite being termed a drop kick, didn't follow those patterns. It looked a lot like this:


Ouch.