Fan Expo Day 2/UFC 162

 

We got up this morning & had a bit of a subdued breakfast. We caught the shuttle again again & headed back to the Fan Expo. We got there just in time for Forrest Griffin & Stephan Bonnar's Hall of Fame Induction. Lemme just toss this out there: I think there's probably a better "filler" fight you can show on the big screens before this event than the one they picked:

 

Yeah, that's Bonnar/Silva. Ouch, guys.

 

Dana came out & was really fired up. He gave an incredibly passionate speech about the state of the UFC before TUF and the struggles they went through just to get it on the air and declared that without Forrest & Stephan, this sport would no longer exist. We then got to watch a really cool highlight video about the two of them, which mainly showed a bunch of highlights from The Fight. Pretty awesome stuff. Here's a whole slew of pics:

 

Forrest & Stephan giving their acceptance speeches

 

After that , we decided to get up & go wander the floor some more. We ended up at the Grapplers Quest mats & watched some Kid Jitsu. On the one hand, it was cute & adorable to see all these little grapplers going at it, made you feel good about the future of our sport. On the other hand, every kid that lost teared up & was absolutely heart-broken. Made you feel ashamed to have enjoyed the match. But only for a minute, because their parents/coaches were instantly right there to console them & help them to be good sports, teaching them how to lose the right way. Good stuff, all the way.

 

Hustled back to the Main Stage, though, because at 12:30, the one, the only Chael P. Sonnen took over the mike. It was absolutely as outlandish & hysterical as you think it was. I'm hoping that by the time I finish editing this, there video will have been put online (EDIT: I've looked everywhere & can't find a link, sorry y'all), but in the meantime, lemme just list the highlights I can remember:

1. Lebron James
2. Oklahoma "Real Talk"
3. Anderson & Chris' kiss
4. Words of encouragement for Brazil
5. Contract demands
6. Marry/Screw/Kill with Gilbert Godfrey, Rosie O'Donnell & Kirstie Alley
7. Story between Yushin & Chael's mom

So now we head to the MGM Grand Garden Arena for UFC 162. I manage to leave my phone in the cab like a moron, but fortunately the driver found it & pulled a U-turn to bring it back to me. Like a boss. Anyhow, we head inside & they've set us up right in the middle of the action: the tunnel into the arena is over one shoulder & Ariel Helwani's interviews are over the other.

 

 

Man, what a card of fights! I don't even know where to begin. I gotta say, I really enjoy watching the fights when I'm scoring the events. I have to engage all my faculties to focus on the fight & record the stats accurately, so there's no option of looking away & missing something, or forgetting what's been going on in a round. Anyhow, I had the blue corner (aka underdog) fighters & we did decently, I think. I mean, sure: we went 3-7 on the night, but 2 of those 3 were pretty spectacular KOs & 4 of the other were really exciting!

 

Let's been honest, though: all anyone remembers is the Main Event at this point (I dunno if I really need to say it, but here it is anyway: ***SPOILERS***). Man, what an electricity went thought that place as those guys walked out. Even in the back, I could feel my hairs stand to stand on end. The fight begins & Wiedman does just what he promised he would: he puts Anderson on his back & starts unleashing some nasty ground & pound. I'll be honest, if you had told me Chris would win by (T)KO, I would have assumed it'd be like that. When he dropped into that kneebar/heel hook, I started getting ready to celebrate a new champ, but Anderson proved his McDonald's black belt from the Nogueiras was legit & defended well. They get back to their feet & Anderson has clearly decided he's over being on his back & starts drawing Chris into his world. By this point, I was rooting for Chris (I came into the fight undecided). I mean, between the near-subs & the fact that I was scoring him, my mind had been made up for me. I was honestly getting pissed that Chris was letting Anderson con him like that, distracting him from his gameplan & bringing him right into the lion's den. They break for the round & head to their corners where Ray Longo's yelling at Chris to "puncha hole in his chest!" & I'm thinking "ummmm, how about you tell him 'don't play that game: plant his ass back on the canvas!'" Shows how much I know! There's Anderson: taunting, bobbing & weaving around the Octagon, shaking off Chris' punches & playing it up the crowd. Bang out of nothing comes muderous left hook & Anderson drops. It wasn't until 3 vengeful punches later, once they were already on the ground, that I realized I need to score that knockdown. I mean, I never occured to me that I would ever have any use for that button while scoring for Chris. I literally had to look back down & find the right button. My mind was in utter shock. As soon as Herb stepped in, I was out of my chair, jumping, clapping, screaming & losing my mind that I was a part of that night, that I got to keep stats for the winner of this historical fight! At that point, we just turned around & watch Ariel interview Roy Jones, Jr. & Dana White as everyone tried to wrap their heads around what had just happened.

 

We couldn't let the night end that way. Normally, as soon as the last fight is over, we just make our way back to the hotel & try to get some sleep before flying out, but there was no way this night called for the normal routine. We made good use of our UFC crednetials & went to the Post-Fight Press Conference. Watching Dana's reaction to questions about "was that fight a work?" was hysterical.. You could just see the dollar signs disappearing from behind his eyes as the super-fights went up in smoke. Chris came in a little late & the whole place went nuts for him. Anderson got an ovation when he arrived, too. It was a pretty special experience.

 

 

 

VCURamFan

UFC Fan Expo Day 1

This is free???

Got up & got breakfast this morning, then rolled over to the Fan Expo. Got in & started wandering the floor. First impression was that there were a lot of people camped out for signatures. Like, sitting-on-the-floor, food-&-belongs-spread-out-around-them, making-a-day-of-it camping out. Never made much sense to me, but sure, go for it. Anyhow, some of the cooler events on the schedule were to be on the "Main Stage", so I headed over there around 10:30 for Jay Glazer's Q&A.

He talked mostly about Fox Sports 1 & which NFLers would do well in MMA. Pretty funny, but not much groundbreaking stuff. Next up was the one everyone was waiting for, though: Dana White. Everyone was trying to get free stuff outta him. Asking for free tickets, seat upgrades, jobs, "get my an autograph with [fighter X]" & the classic "when are you coming to [insert gone town]?" Hmm, now a guy's pitching "a marketing idea to increase you PPV by a minimum 30%". Interesting...

Up next was Joe Rogan & he was awesome. He didn't pull any punches with his answers, especially when he felt like the questioners needed to get their balls busted a bit. Absolutely hysterical, he had all of us rolling.

 

Mike Dolce's Q&A was a nerdy meathead's dream. All about plugging the new UFC Fit program, too. It was interesting to see him dance back & forth between canned answers to questions he'd heard a million times before, but then switch over immediately & give very detailed responses to the question, anyway. Like he couldn't contain the knowledge bursting out of him!

 

Bruce Buffer was up next, but pickings were pretty slim. A one point, he got so low on questioners that he offered to go ahead & fulfill the coupla requests for autographs/pics he had gotten & suddenly got swarmed by about 20-30 people! Ended up working out for him, 'cause he hopped back on stage real quick & the new crowd stuck around for him. He did get the same questions about whether we'll see the Buffer 360 again & fighting Frank Trigg about 4 times each.

 

They had a gap then until the weigh-ins at 4pm, which were held at the Mandalay Bay Event Center, but they streamed it here at the main stage, too. I like the on-screen graphics & picture-in-picture they had with the analysts to give background info. If I didn't know any better, I'd say we've got us a real sport!

 

Last up was what I had been looking forward to all day: the Q&A with Matt Hughes & Chuck Liddell. It was kinda funny, the first 3 questions were for Chuck & a little kid wanted to get his Orund 5 figure signed, so Matt held Chuck's mike for him. While Chuck's signing, Matt looks up for the next questioner. The guy says "My question's for Chuck..." and Matt just raises his hand, waves to the crowd & goes "Hi guys, I'm here!" Crowdgot a good chuckle out of that. I missed a chunk in the middle because a couple of my coworkers from FightMetric showed p & I needed to give them their passes into the Expo, but by the time I got back, the questions had really picked up. I don't remember all of 'em, but there was one where they asked Chuck & Matt for their favorite fight of the other's. Chuck talked about being in the back, warming up for his fight against Randy at UFC 52 & jumping around going nuts watching the second Trigg fight. Matt talked about Chuck's match-up against Vitor at 37.5. There was a lot of questions about regulation & getting into New York, which both guys said they'd been working on & felt like it was close. Another guy asked who they would fight if they could hand-pick their next opponent. Chuck said he'd want to get back one of his losses. Matt said anyone he could beat. "I don't care if he's in a stroller or a walker, just get him in the cage & gimme 20sec with him!" He then said he'd heard a rumor that Royce wanted a rematch. "I don't know if Royce actually said that or not, but if Royce were to come up on stage & ask to fight, I take that the DW right now!"

 

-----

 

Ok, so that was the main stage stuff. When I wasn't sitting on my duff, I was wandering the floor & having a good time. Grapplers Quest has a massive tournament going on in one corner, in the other is a big UFC Fit set up with heavy bags, TRX straps, a giant metal walk-over staircase thing & then 4 stations that each had a row machine, a heavy bag, battle ropes & a plyo box. These were for the UFCGym Challenge. 30 competitors (15 men & 15 women) were put into 4 heats (per gender), with the top 8 moving on to the finals tomorrow. The set was 250m on the row machine's highest setting, 10 slams of the heavy bag, 10 burped with the battle ropes & 10 plyo box jumps. They had 10min & had to complete as many sets as they could in that time.

 

Most of the booths were what you'd expect: booth babes outside trying to entice people in, extremely passionate sales people, lots of pedestrians trying to avoid eye contact. Venum had chick DJing & various girls up on platforms modeling some of the gear by dancing around. The biggest get of the day though was when I wandered through the UFC's store/booth. They had a lot of gear on clearance & I was shocked to find they had two bins FULL of Pride DVDs, and they were all $1 each! I bought 13. Would have bought more, but that's all they had. I'll prolly end up swinging back through there again tomorrow to see if they put out any new ones. On top of that, they had the UFC Encyclopedia on sale for just $25, which is 50% off. When you consider a DVDs usually about $10, I spent $38 on $180 worth of gear. Winner = Westcott.

----------

 

So after the Expo, my buddies & I headed back to our hotel because, in addition to the free, cooked-to-order breakfast that iPad this morning, they have an open bar for guests from 5:30-7:30! So yeah, we got back at 6:51 & may or may not have crushed 4ish rounds before the free drinks stopped 39min later. Don't judge me. At that point, the night devolved into 4 dudes having 3 conversations that somehow managed to sync up at the laugh breaks. At some point we went to some restaurant called Pepperini (I think?)* & consumed massive amounts of food. When then walked down the road until we ran into a cab letting some people out & climbed in after them. As he drove us back to our hotel, we had a very intense discussion about the state of SNL & Frankie Edgar's fighting style. I somehow ended up back in my room sometime around 12:30 & figured bedtime sounded good.

 

*Nope, way off. It was called "Peppermill"

 

VCURamFan

Of Nerds & Men

Happy 4th of July, everyone!!!

So I'm hanging out here at the airport, waiting for my flight to Atlanta (edit - I started this at RIC but didn't actually get everything finished & uploaded until I was actually in Vegas). It's, how you say, remarkably empty here. I'm less than 45min before boarding & there are...4 other people visible in this terminal. And that's including the airline employee at my fate. Anyhow, it's a pretty chill start to what should be a really fun trip. Here's the simple breakdown of my weekend:

• Leave on a flight paid for by the UFC
• Check into a hotel paid for by the UFC
• Tomorrow & Saturday, go to the UFC Fan Expo for free using the UFC Guest credential overnight end to me by the UFC
• Eat food using the per diem given to me by the UFC
• Attend UFC 162 & receive a paycheck from the UFC
• Fly home (again: paid for by the UFC)

*insert psychotic giggling here*

That's the ultra-braggy, overly glamorized version of my weekend. Here's what's really gonna happen. I'm going to spend roughly the next 8hrs doing the air travel shuffle before crashing at the Embassy Suites around 3am "my time".
Tomorrow at 10am PST I'll enter (temporary) MMA-nerd-Mecca & spend 8hrs enjoying all the various sights, sounds & stereotypes that will be a convention of TapouT shirts. I mean, there'll be more cool people, but the TapouT/Affliction will be the ones being the ridiculous & the most fun to watch. I'm looking forward to also catching some of the addresses on the Main Stage, most notably Forrest & Stephan's HoF inductions and Matt Hughes/Chuck Liddell Q&A (duh!).


Throughout the day, my FightMetric coworkers will be arriving & I'll be doling out the UFC Guest passes which were given to us by the fine people at Zuffa. Saturday will be more of the same, right up until about 2pm, when we are due to report to the MGM Grand Garden Arena for our evening's duties. That'll wrap up by about 10pm PST (unless Anderson feels like leaving earlier), at which point I'll either end up heading back to the room or else hanging out with my coworkers if they decide to go out (unlikely). Sunday, I'll get up, check out & then head to back McCarren for my 11:30am PST flight out of Vegas.

Throughout it all, I'll prolly be spamming my Facebook & Twitter pages with updates about the minutia of my days, so feel free to follow me there if you want to. I'll do my best to post a daily summary here each evening/night, as well (the links for which will prolly spammed on the aforementioned social media networks).

**end MMA-oriented discussion**

Now, here's where things take a turn for the nerdy (don't act like you're surprised): I'm not a gambler. I also have no interest in the club scene unless I'm hanging with friends. Top that off with the fact that my budget doesn't have room for a show & it seems like I've decided to be pretty bored in the evenings, right? WRONG!! Has anyone ever heard of a little show called Doctor Who? Yeeeeeeeah, I'm a Whovian. I ripped through the entire modern library in about a month, just in time to catch the Series 7 finale (MAJOR spoilers in that link, FYI). I now have two problems:

1. Doctor Who withdrawals - I binged on one of the greatness nerd shows & am forced to wait until Nov. 23rd for the 50th Anniversary before I get a new episode.
2. Nerd OCD - I feel compelled to know everything I possibly can about the Whoniverse (did I just invent that? TM?).

Fortunately, both of those issues can be solved with one simple solution: CLASSIC DOCTOR WHO! You see, Doctor Who first premiered in 1963 & ran on the BBC for 27 seasons before being cancelled in 1989. It also spawned a TV movie in 1996, but it wasn't until 2005 that it was revived (dare I say, regenerated?) in the modern series. This means that I've got decades of episodes to watch in order to fully tank up on my nerd-cred. Now, even I realize that this is a ridiculously huge commitment of time & it would be impossible to watch all of though before my self-imposed deadline (11/23 for the 50th special), so I came up with the perfect nerd-solution, of course: SPREADSHEET!!!

I can't post the link here (have to wait until i'm on a non-mobile sevice), but here's what it is: a list of every single Doctor Who storyline, complete with links to season overviews, episode summaries & (most importantly) the Dailymotion playlist for each series. Here's what this allows me to do: for each storyline, I check out the synopsis & if it seems like a cool/pivotal/interesting series, I watch the playlist. Otherwise, I just read the episode summaries & move to the next. As you probably also noticed, I've got a couple columns there for me to take notes & to track my favorite episodes. That's mainly for my brother Ryan, who's a little behind me in his Who-viewing (he keeps throwing out his family & his job as some kinda lame excuse), as a but of a roadmap for him.So yeah: anytime I'm not actively involved in MMA nerding, I'll engaged in more traditional nerding. I'll be one happy nerd this 4th of July weekend!

VCURamFan