Caulifower Ear.
WTF is that? Ever notice some of your favorite MMA fighters ears. Beautiful aren't they? Balled up hard shitty looking ears resembling the ears of Slaw from the Goonies? That my friends is cauliflower ear.
It's pretty common in boxers, wrestlers and, MMA fighters. It's caused by trauma to the ear that ruptures blood vessels separating the skin from the cartilage in the ear. After the separation, the cartilage doesn't have any way to recieve blood so it shrivels up, dies, and makes a dudes ear look like a chunk of cauliflower. I know as a kid I thought it looked pretty badass until my sophomore year in High school noticed after a tough day of wrestling practice that the top of my right ear was swollen. I really didn't want to look badass, I wanted to look pretty because the ladies liked me pretty. I went home that day and showed my dad, who happened to be a boxer in his younger days. He laughed and told me to run to the drug store and buy a few syringes. Told me he would take care of it. I didn't know that you could buy syringes at the drug store? So I ran to the drug store, told the pharmacist that I needed a couple of syringes to suck the blood out of my cauliflower ear. He didn't even flinch at the idea. Little did I know that I would use cauliflower ear as the excuse to by syringes in the future...

So I went home and my dad grabbed a syringe stuck it in my ear until it slid into the blood pocket easily, and he sucked the blood out of my ear. When he was finished, my ear looked normal again. He told me to grab a cold compress and put pressure on both sides of my ear for an hour and that we would do the same thing the next day. After a few weeks of doing this, I noticed that my ear started to harden and heal and it didn't look too bad. Just as I was starting to feel pretty again, my other ear recieved a couple of very hard blows (no homo)and I had to repeat the process.
I noticed as the years went by, (and the more aggressive that my sporting events became) that I was fighting a losing battle with cauliflower ear. I found myself on a nightly basis sticking syringes into both of my ears draining the blood. I've always been a pretty man, and hated to see my beautiful ears go to shit. As time has gone on, my ears are now hard as hell. They look somewhat normal to the untrained eye, but if you look at them directly or even touch them you know that my ears were dealt a pretty shitty hand in this life.

Thanks for reading.

You may have just read this and thought: "Why the hell did Ed just write that fricken novel about his ears?" Well kids, besides being a narcissist and like to talk about myself, I just gave you a good angle to purchase syringes.

Take some cotton, and some tape. Bandage the top of your ear, walk into a pharmacy and tell them you need a box of syringes to suck the blood out of your damaged cauliflower ear. It's much easier than pretending to be a junkie, and instead of getting the funny look from a pharmacist, you get a look of respect.

For a final thought.
I see a lot of guys with UFC shirts, belt buckles, bumper stickers etc. I think that's fine a dandy, however having a UFC shirt doesn't tell me that you are a badass. It may tell some people that you are a badass but, the only thing it tells me is that you like to watch UFC on TV.
Now, when I run into someone with some sort of MMA branded item, the very first thing that I look at after I look at his physique (no homo) are his ears. If they are balled up shitty looking pieces if cauliflower... Well, I'm probably going to take you a little more seriously.