Mustache contest trophies handed out to handlebar-wearing competition winners. Or losers?

I've only won two trophies in my lifetime, neither of which was for the mustache I began growing in the seventh grade in honor of Eric Sloane, the perm-wearing brother of Jean-Claude Van Damme in the movie Kickboxer—a man whose legs were paralyzed by Tong Po in the ring, but whose mustache remained undefeated the world over.

My first trophy was from a dance contest I won while on a Carnival cruise through the Caribbean. I showed everyone circled around me in the ship's disco bar exactly what Montel Jordan meant by "This is how we do it." So well, in fact, that all the gang bangers forgot about the drive-by. But all the honeys remembered my mustache, beaded with a mixture of equal parts perspiration and pineapple daiquiri.

Mustache Mondays at the Van Damme DOJO Presents: Mustache contest winners get trophies, give rides (not necessarily in that order)

Hoping to find out how I could add a third trophy for the shelf above my framed Kickboxer movie poster—this one on account of the well-manicured, must-see 'stache cultivated above my lips for the last decade—I Googled "mustache trophies" at Ask.com. (The verb Google is like the noun Kleenex, right?)

What I found was something indescribably beautiful, that I will describe with the words "almost as beautiful as one of Jean-Claude Van Damme's head-high, 360-degree, split-legged kicks performed in a loin cloth."

What was it? The Bigelow Mustache Championship, an annual competition, as explained on the home page of the championship's website, that sprung forth from the query-slash-conundrum "How do we decide who is the ultimate man?"

As you would expect from an event that held its 11th annual contest in 2004, it has a Hall of Champions. Why does such a hall, however grand one would assume it to be given its existence, exist in the first place?

The Hall of Champions exists to recognize those who have taken home the coveted Bigelow Mustache Champion Trophy for their respective years. The Champions earned the Trophy from the BMC Judges based on originality, creativity, fullness, character, poise and manliness. These are not just the BMC Champions, These are Champions of Men.

Walk through Boystown in Chicago on any given summer night, and you'll see mustaches with originality, creativity, fullness, character and, yes—in the country's first officially recognized gay district—manliness. But poise? Not everyday, my friends. And I commute on my neon green Huffy mountain bike south from Addison Street down Halsted Avenue each morning, en route to my downtown job selling the RedEye—Chicago's only free daily newspaper—to camera-toting tourists for three bucks a pop.

But witness the poise in these pictures, showcased just north of the lips on these Bigelow Mustache Champions, each having proved with his mustache he was that year's ultimate embodiment of manliness. And also witness the sizable trophy, engraved with the winners' names, held by each Ultimate Man. Dare I call it the Ultimate Trophy?


Those mustaches are, without a doubt, manly. And sexy, a characteristic any mustache inherently possesses. But, IM-not-so-HO, my in-the-works-since-seventh-grade, Eric Sloane-honoring mustache tops all three in the photos above.

Will I be entering next year's Bigelow Mustache Championship, in an effort to realize my goal of hirsute hardware? With the last year posted from 2004, it appears the competition has been defunct for a few years now. For the sake of the wives and girlfriends of the members of the Hall of Champions, I hope their mustaches aren't also defunct.