Laser treatment has faded the once-famous tattooed letters on Rufus Hannah’s fingers, but they are still a reminder of a life he hopes he’s left behind. (K.C. Alfred)

Rufus Hannah, left, and Barry Soper were unlikely friends -- one was homeless, the other a successful businessman. Their friendship was forged next to a Dumpster and solidified next to an empty casket. (K.C. Alfred)

Rufus Hannah looks down at his hands and sees reminders of what he used to be, maybe the most famous homeless man in America. Famous in a bad way.

He was the degraded and brutalized “star” of a 2002 video called “Bumfights,” which captured him in full drunken abandon, riding in a grocery cart down concrete steps, running head-first into walls, punching his best friend.


Tattooed across his knuckles are the letters B-U-M-F-I-G-H-T.

He’s had three laser treatments to remove the letters, but he would need another two dozen to make them disappear. The treatments are painful. He’s not sure how many more he can do.

Ask him about the tattoos and what they represent and he admits some shame. But it’s not what you might think.

He doesn’t feel sorry for himself, even if all the head-bashing he went through left him with double-vision and a wobbly walk. He’s come a long way from the wild-haired, toothless cartoon that starred in the movie. Sober now for eight years, he has a steady job and a new wife and a life he likes in the San Carlos neighborhood of San Diego.


No, what bothers him is how “Bumfights” contributed to a sick trend: homeless bashing. From coast to coast, certain people — usually young men — have deemed it not just OK but cool to physically attack transients. And sometimes film it.

Last year, 43 homeless people were killed in America, up from 27 the year before and the second-most fatalities in the 11 years the National Coalition for the Homeless has been keeping track.

“The homeless are the one group it’s still socially acceptable to disdain,” said Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor at Cal State San Bernardino and director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. “Young people take that as a green light to commit acts of aggression against them.”

Hannah, 55, hopes to change that. He regularly gives speeches at universities, goes face to face with students who have been known to play drinking games while watching “Bumfights.” (Toss back a shot every time Rufus falls down.)


He is working with state and federal legislators to pass hate-crime legislation that would increase the penalties for those convicted of attacking the homeless.

And he’s written a book, “A Bum Deal,” that tells his story. It came out last month.

Actually, he didn’t write it. His name is on the cover, but the writer was Barry Soper, a Point Loma businessman who turned out to be the unlikeliest of friends.

Dumpster diving

They had almost nothing in common. Hannah was born and raised in Georgia, an upbringing that was Baptist in principle and alcoholic in practice. He dropped out of high school, had five kids with three different women. Soper, a Jew, was born in Massachusetts and earned a sociology degree from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut before coming to San Diego and buying a string of rental-housing complexes.


They met on a summer day 11 years ago at one of the complexes, in San Carlos. At a Dumpster outside the complex, to be exact. Hannah and his best friend were there looking for aluminum cans they could turn into cash, and ultimately into booze.

Soper, 65, doesn’t usually pay much attention to his trash receptacles, but someone had defecated next to this particular one a day earlier, so he was watchful. When he caught Hannah inside the Dumpster that morning, he got mad.

“Get the hell out of here,” Soper said.

“You’re ruining our canning route,” Hannah snapped back.


Urged by a neighbor to help the transients rather than run them off, Soper hired the two to do odd jobs around the complex. Their work was good. He hired them again.

“I started to see them as human beings,” Soper said.

Then Hannah and his friend, Donnie Brennan, got sucked into “Bumfights,” which seemed like easier money. The filmmakers plied them with alcohol, gave them cigarettes and a few bucks, and got them to act crazy.

Some people thought it was funny.


Soper wasn’t among them. Alarmed when he saw Brennan with the word “Bumfight” tattooed across his forehead, Soper urged them to stop going along with the stunts. He contacted a lawyer about suing the filmmakers.

And when they called for help one day from an apartment in Las Vegas, where the filmmakers had stashed them, Soper got on a plane and brought them back to San Diego.

He was by their side for a criminal trial that eventually landed two of the filmmakers in jail and a civil suit that paid at least $300,000 (minus legal fees). And he was there when Hannah had a grand mal seizure and was rushed to a hospital.

A doctor told Hannah he’d be dead in a year if he didn’t stop drinking. Soper drove him to a mortuary and gave him a choice: Get into rehab or pick out your casket.


Making amends

Hannah works for Soper as the assistant manager at the 62-unit townhome complex where they first encountered each other out at the Dumpster.

Every day is a challenge. “I loved to get drunk,” he said. “I see a TV show like ‘Law & Order,’ where they win a case and go back to the office and have a drink, and I say to myself, ‘Boy, that looks pretty good.’ I can almost taste it. But I don’t ever want to go back there.”

He’s been reaching out to his four sons and one daughter, now grown. He flew to Georgia for a visit, got to talking with one of his old lovers, the mother of two of the boys. She came back with him to California and they were married last November.

“I always thought dying on the street would be my fate,” he said.


Not his fate, he now believes, nor his legacy. No matter what his knuckles say.