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

I'm alive!!!

stolen from DrawCeption.com

Well this sure has been an interesting 48hrs!  As of my last posting (Wednesday night), I was frustrated because I was too tired to do any of my extracurricular workouts.  Thursday morning, I woke up, bright-eyed & bushy-tailed, amazed at how much energy I suddenly had.  Sure, there was a tickle in my throat & Alex had come home from work sick the night before, but who cared?  I was finally over the hump & could start working harder!!

Unfortunately, as the morning progressed, the tickle turn into a scratch, turned into a sore throat & I felt my body temperature rising.  I pushed through to finish the morning's work, told my bosses I felt like crap & went home to self medicate (Zinc, Vitamin C& DayQuil) and sleep.  I had hoped I'd wake up from my nap feeling great.  No dice.  I had to tell Jarrett & Jon that my weak body had betrayed me & I was unable to come in to train.  Not even one week in & I'm already having to skip practices.  Great.

On the plus side, while on my way in to work Thursday morning, I had already called my GP, Dr. Piland, to set up my pre-fight medical screening for 2:30pm the next day.  When I woke up still feeling crummy on Friday, at least I knew I was already on the books to get checked out.  I muddled through the morning (ended up taking a nap), showered & dressed and then headed out to my appointment.  I got there a few minutes early, waited around for awhile, was ushered back to the examination room about 15min late, and 15min later, was cleared to fight!  He also checked my throat & said that a) I was on the down slope of whatever it was that had been bugging me, but b) I still shouldn't go to the gym that night.  Well drat, now I'm bailing on a third of the classes this week.  Weak sauce.

Now comes the kicker: in addition to my 2:30 with Dr. Piland, I also had a 4:20 with Dr. Hong, my optometrist.  I had been really nervous about this particular appointment because I remembered (after that awesome shin-to-face experience AJ introduced me to), that he had found some sort of retina issue with my eyes when I was a kid.  Needless to say, retina issues + blows to the head = bad stuff.

I went in, explained the situation to him & got my vision check.  20/400, AWESOME!  I mean, without glasses.  With glasses, I gotta be at least...what, like 20/390?  Anyhow, then come the eye drops to dilate my pupils, the thirty minute wait while I lose focus & then the flashlight through a magnifying glass into my eye-ball.  No, seriously: he puts on a head lamp, grabs a hand-held lens, and shines that jank DIRECTLY INTO MY EYEBALL!!  I mean, I know that he needs to do this in order to see the inner wall of my retina & stuff, but MAN it sucks!

As he's looking around, he breaks the news to me that I've got Lattice Degeneration.  Turns out that I have with a condition that makes it more likely that I'm going to suffer retinal tears.  Balls.  But then as he's looking all around my eye, he seems to be getting less & less dour.  After he's hit the eight angles on each eye, he actually starts to smile!

"Well, I've got good news, Ben!" he says, "All the little tears and holes I had noted when you were a child have actually completely healed over!  It looks like your eyes are completely - o wait, there's some fresh damage."

You gotta be frakkin' kidding me.

I thought I was home-free & then it comes crashing down just like that.  I won't get into the rest of the visit, but it basically breaks down like this: I'm just naturally at a higher risk for retinal tears than the rest of  the population, and there's no way to know how many tears there are (or how bad they are) during my day to day life until I suddenly start seeing weird spots, a "veil drops over your vision", or just stop seeing stuff.

This makes it sound really terrible & like if I step outside in a rain storm I'm gonna turn into Geordi La Forge.  Dr. Hong says that's worse case scenario (obviously), and that it's perfectly plausible that I could go through this whole fight camp & the tournament itself in March & suffer no ill-effects.  Heck, he even filled out the medical form for me, but he looked my squared in the eyes (at least I assume so, the eye drops still had my pupils wonky) & told me that if I was his son, he'd tell me not to do it & that it wasn't worth the risk.

So now I'm at a cross roads.  In about 30min, I'll be heading to the Saturday afternoon conditioning class led by BJJ brown belt Daniel Frank (did I mention I woke up this morning feeling amazing?), and afterwards, I'll talk to my coaches.  I'll be honest, I'm leaning towards not doing the tournament anymore.  I've always wanted to do at least 1 BJJ competition, 1 Muay Thai fight & 1 MMA fight, but it looks like that might not be the wisest goal to pursue.  It'd be different if I were considering being a pro fighter & making this my career, but since it's just a hobby meant to deepen my understanding & love of these sports, I don't think it's worth it.  Maybe Jarrett & Jon will be able to talk some sense into me after class, but I dunno.

Just to be clear, even if I decide not to fight, I'm still going to be part of Fight Camp.  There are still 5 other guys planning to fight on March 9th & I am still 100% committed helping them & firing them up.  The only piece I'll have to opt-out of is Tuesday/Thrusday hard sparring at the end of the night.  All the other jump roping, shadow boxing, cut kick & pads rounds (plus MWF light-sparring), I'll be right there with 'em.

-------

Well, just got back from the conditioning class.  First things first: screw you, Daniel Frank!  Man, that guy designs one miserable workout!  Ok now that's out of the way:

Second things second: THANK YOU, DANIEL FRANK!!  MAN, that guy designs one MISERABLE workout!!  Whoo-ee, that was no joke!  Lunges, Frog Jumps, Front Jacks, Sprawls & Mountain Climbers, 30secs each and that's just the warm-up!  Then we hit pyramids of push-ups, CrossFit sit-up, burpees, squats & active planks, finished off with jump-roping until all other teams finished.  MISERABLE & AWESOME!  I hated it & can't wait to be back next week!

OK, to wrap-up: I talked to Jon (Jarrett wasn't able to make it today), and he of course was very understanding & supportive.  He's was OK with my plan of stepping back from being a fighter to just a helper, but said to think & pray on it for the weekend & then touch base with him & Jarrett on Monday.

Gotta be honest, having coaches who look out for your well-being & not just the prestige of their program is an amazing blessing that isn't lost on me.  Can't wait to get back in there Monday!

I've got to admit it's getting better

The only picture I want to post is the one of my Batman-emblem-shaped, CD-sized bruise on my inner thigh, but I can't think of a way to take a picture that doesn't look remarkably lewd & lascivious, so I'll just pass this time.

The hardest part about tonight was actually today: I was exhausted at work.  I could barely keep my eyes open or my head up.  The sudden tax on my energy reserves that I've surprised my body with has really hit me hard.  I'm getting more sleep (10:30p-7:15a instead of 1a-7:45a) & eating a lot better (6 lean protein meals instead of 2 massive fast food/pizza/etc.), but it's still not enough.  I don't know what the solution is, but I've got to find a way to get more rest & more energy.

Here's the biggest reason I need more energy (besides not passing out on my keyboard): I haven't done a minute of roadwork or a strength workout.  I know those are both HUGEly important pieces to the puzzle, but I don't have the time.  I'm sleeping as late as I can get away with while still eating breakfast & getting to work on time (I used to skip breakfast) & when I get home I need to take a nap to make sure I'm up for Fight Camp.  Once I get home, it's a mad rush to eat, wash my sweaty clothes, clean my gear, shower, post this little 10min thing & then crash.  Even now, I'm pushing to get this done ASAP so I can sack out at 10 instead of 10:30 (notice the lack of witty remarks & enlightening links?).  When I'm already pissed at myself for coming in out of shape & being the weak link on the team, it makes it so much worse that now I can't even meet the requirements set out by the coaches.

If I'm still dragging at work tomorrow, I'll have to talk to Jon & Jarrett about it.  I need to have a solution to this.  I can't have this continue.

Still moving

 

Anyone want to join me for a rousing game of Guess the Bodily Fluid?

Well, tonight was basically the same as last night, just tougher.  We got an extra round of cut kicks & combos on the Thai pads.  As a personal victory, I didn't skip any burpee rounds.  I was no where close to getting all 15 done, but I was moving all the way through.

Then came sparring.  Tonight was Hard Sparring, but the coaches had mercy on us & didn't require burpees in between.  I don't remember too many specifics.  Caught one of Ricketts' kicks & took him down off it.  Brian got me in the clinch & drilled me with a couple of vicious knees.  My night ended when I was sparring with AJ.  Shocker: my cardio sucks.  Other shocker: sucky cardio = sucky technique.  He was pressuring me HARD & I was trying to circle away.  Next thing I knew, there was a shin bone introducing itself to my nose.  Begin blood faucet.  Missed the next round trying to plug that up & apparently there weren't any rounds after that.

Even barring that, I feel better tonight than I did 24hrs ago & I credit that 100% to my boy Alex.  He's a personal trainer & has laid out a simple but solid diet plan for me.  Being properly fueled was HUGE.

Well that SUCKED

Today was Day 1 of Fight Camp.  I will be competing at the 13th Annual WKA North American Championships amateur kickboxing tournament on March 9th.  I am currently a soft something-over 210 (my guess is 215, but I don't have a reliable scale at home), and I am shooting for the 187-198lbs weight class.  Why have I set myself the task of dropping roughly 20lbs in 6 weeks?  Because the weightclass above this is simply 198-infinity lbs.  I'd rather not be faced with Butterbean in my debut match.

So what was it that sucked so much?  Fight Camp.  Fight Camp sucked so much.  Turns out Jon & Jarrett are kinda taking this thing seriously & aren't planning on letting us get worked over in there.  For that reason, they decided it's best to kill us all now & save our opponents the trouble.  Here's what they put us through tonight:

• 3 rounds of jump roping
• 3 rounds of shadow boxing
• 4 rounds of cut kicks on the Thai shields (2 for you, 2 for your partner)
• 4 rounds of combos on the Thai pads (2 for you, 2 for your partner)
• 5 rounds of sparring

All rounds were 2min on, 1min "off".  During your "off" time, you had to do 15 burpees & could then rest for whatever time was left.  As for the sparring, Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays are to be light days, whereas Tuesdays & Thursdays will be KO time.

By the second round of shadow boxing, I was just focusing on keeping my hands up & not being flat footed.  In the third round, I was trying to remember to keep my trap shut & breathe through my nose.  After the first round of cut kicks, I was too busy convincing myself I wasn't going to puke to do the burpees.  Thankfully, after the second round of cut kicks, Marvin got in my ear & talked my indeed doing a measly 3 ugly, ratty burpee wanna-bes.  After two rounds of holding the Thai shield for Gene's cut kicks, my leg was killing me.  During the combo rounds, I could barely think clearly enough to come up a combo to throw.  Like the considerate jerk he is, Gene bum rushed me after every single combo to make me keep my hands up & work on circling away.  In between every round, Gene stood right by me, talking me through those burpees, matching me pace-for-pace, pushing me when I'd slack & hyping me when I was moving.  When I finally made it to sparring, I was struggling.  Fortunately it was a light day, but I swear, I think I could have thrown everything I had into my punches & even Bob Sapp wouldn't have gone down.  Then Jarrett reveals a wonderful surprise: non-fighters no longer have to do burpees between rounds!  Bully for them, now they've got extra energy to murder me while I slow to a pace glaciers would scoff at.

But I did it.  I pushed through.  I hung in there.  And I will be back in there to go through it all again tomorrow.  I have committed myself to the camp and, Lord willing, I will persevere to the end & represent myself, my teammates & my gym well come March 10th.