Gangstas of Football: Craig Bellamy

We here on 116th Street had so much fun doing "Know Your Yanks," that we decided to punish ourselves all over again with a new feature. Learning can be fun, after all! Therefore, in the spirit of giving people the knowledge they really want, we have decided to chronicle the stories of soccer's gully-est. No bios here, just gangsta $#!+. Let's begin with new Liverpool signing, Craig Bellamy.

Craig Bellamy doesn't give a #*^% about Newcastle United. He doesn't give a #*^% who the chairman is, who the coach is, who the icon is. How do I know this? I know this because during his entire tenure with the club, his disregard for all things Magpie was straight up gangsta. How about sending Newcastle legend Alan Shearer a text message saying, "You couldn't even kiss my a**e"? How about skipping the honorary dinner for club chairman (and knight) Sir John Hall so that he could get plastered with his teammates?

Whatever you do, though, don't try to sell him to a lower-table Premiership club. Chairman Freddy Shepherd found that out the hard way, when, in trying to work out a deal to sell Bellamy to Birmingham City, he got a text message (Bellamy keeps his text game filthy) from the striker saying "I am Craig Bellamy and I don't sign for s*** football clubs!"

Bellamy's got no love for the ladies, either. He once stole on a chick for trying to get into Kieron Dyer's car, and he's so gangsta that he had to cut his own honeymoon short to go to the police station after an altercation with a girl in a Cardiff nightclub (to all the ladies out there, keep on fighting for your man Craig, he's a keeper!).

Don't get it twisted, though, Craig Bellamy doesn't just fight girls. He'll do whatever it takes - he'll throw a chair, at his coach, at the airport, over car parking! He is that gangsta, son! He can take a punch, too, like the time he fought his manager, Graeme Souness, at the training ground and got dragged into the gymnasium.

And do you think the threat of getting straight-up beat down will stop him from spewing a little racial abuse in a bouncer's direction? Think again! When he racially insulted an Asian bouncer at a Cardiff nightclub, he got thrown out, not only out of the club, but down the stairs. This actually happened in 2003, well before he threw the chair at his coach at the airport over car parking, or sent the nasty text messages, or cut his honeymoon short because he hit a girl. Craig Bellamy is too gangsta to even learn from his mistakes!

All I'm saying is, Liverpool, be warned: a true OG is coming to your town. And to those Norwich youth teammates who used to lock him in a cupboard because he was so annoying, you're on notice, too!

Oh yeah, I guess I'm supposed to say that these stories are alleged or something like that, and that you can find them here.