Getty Image / Streeter Lecka
After the first half of UVA‘s 2nd round NCAA tournament, they were leading Oklahoma 22-31. It was at that point that diehard Wahoos fan Charlie Waddell made the bold statement that he would get point guard Kihei Clark’s name tattooed on his chest if the University of Virginia Cavaliers went on to win the 2019 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
Flash forward to a year prior, and the Cavaliers suffered that epic defeat in the first round. It was the first time in history a #1 seed lost to a #16 seed in the NCAA tournament when UMBC beat the Cavaliers and sent them packing when everyone thought they could win it all in 2018.
Maybe UVA fan Charlie Waddell didn’t think there was a serious chance the Cavaliers would win it all or maybe he was just putting his conviction in his team out into the universe when he made the tattoo bet/pledge, but whatever it was it worked.
According to StreakingTheLawn, it was during that Oklahoma game that Charlie Waddell looked into the camera of a friend and said “If Virginia wins the National Championship, I will get ‘Kihei’ tatted on my chest.” That video circulated throughout UVA social media that night after being posted to Facebook and now he’s a man of his word.
https://twitter.com/GarrettKlingel/status/1190635055846174722
The genesis of all this was questioning Kihei Clark’s presence on the court, playing time, and overall value to the team. Basically, he was saying that if UVA lost it would be because of Clark and the prospect of getting a Kihei tattoo was infinitesimal because Clark would somehow ruin it all for the Cavaliers.
“I stand by most of my assessments of him last year,” Waddell said via text after getting his lifelong tribute to the 5’9 guard. “I was a little wrong in his overall value, I’ll admit that, but he was an issue at times. [That’s] why he didn’t play 2nd half in some games down the stretch.” (via)
After that Oklahoma game, Kihei Clark played a pivotal role in UVA’s run to the championship. He made the game-tying 3-pointer against Oregon in the Sweet 16 with minutes left on the clock and slotted a nearly perfect pass against Purdue to push the game to Overtime and an eventual Final Four.
Jump to present day and the way o StreakingTheLawn tells it, Charlie Waddell and his friends had to track down Kihei Clark’s autograph for this tattoo bet:
Following the title, Waddell was reminded by both his friends and the strangers on Facebook about his wager. Waddell and his friends took to Twitter to try and track down Kihei Clark’s autograph, and a stranger obliged with a photo of it courtesy of an item Clark signed at a Meet the Team event. Well, Thursday, October 31 — some 208 days after Kihei Clark and the Cavaliers hoisted the trophy — Waddell went to Mystic Tattoo in Charlottesville and got Ian to make true on the bet.
This was his first tattoo and could very well be his last. Is it a weird one? Sure. But sports causes people to do strange things.
This is infinitely better than getting a Championship Tattoo before your team has won it all. Those people who get tattoos guaranteeing a championship all but ensure their team will falter and fail somewhere along the way. At least he waited until the end and when his friends showed up with the receipts he went to the tattoo shop. I dig it.
For a full rundown of this story, you can click here to visit Streaking The Lawn.