Not having sampled the pieces of fried and sauced chicken flesh from Tennessee chain Wing Guru it’s impossible to speak to the quality of the product, however that founder Billy Richmond Jr was able to expand from one location opened in Memphis 2016 to three in the Volunteer State plus a fourth in Metro Atlanta is a fairly solid indicator of estimable talent at preparing the beloved staple.

One can easily imagine the love, care, and precision that Richmond puts into formulating new sauce combinations, tirelessly perfecting the balance of sweet, sour, spicy, umami, and so on again and again and again from shelves full of different ingredients until the sauce meets his exacting standards for quality – and that’s before BEFORE he even dips it in both bleu cheese and ranch. If neither dressing works then it’s back to the kitchen for more tasting, testing, and stirring.

For whom could claim the honorific of “guru” and truly own it without waking years given to study and practice? Surrender to the wing to become one with it. Then one’s aura becomes the sauce.

Such ramekins of wisdom sadly cannot be filled and dipped from when the subject turns to Richmond’s mastery of tax evasion. In fact he kind of fucking sucks at it, pleading no contest Thursday in a Memphis court to two counts of falsifying state tax revenue and one on theft of property greater than $250,000, per WREG. Other than that quarter million floor and Richmond posting on Facebook that he let things get out of hand from 2018 to 2022, there isn’t really much on the scope of his crimes. But one not need taste the failure to transcend the petty cumbrances of this plane to understand he’s no tax evasion guru. He’s an inertion. A brittle husk. A void of the art.