Going... Going...

Today is the day before the day I leave for Scout camp for a whole week. A whole week in the mountains with 7 squirrely young men between the ages of 12 and 16.

They'll be sleeping in tents, cooking their own food, cleaning up after themselves including our campsite latrine. They'll have to walk to get anywhere, go to merit badge classes, and hopfully not get too bored with having to entertain themselves with out a tv, video games, ipod, cell phones, computers, etc.

They've been encouraged to bring their Duty to God booklets, scriptures, Boy Scout handbook, merit badge pamphlets, writing supplies, and the like, to fill what ever "extra" time they have.

I'm looking forward to finding out what things they forgot to pack (sarcasm), and helping them to look at the "bright side", namely- "The good news is, next time you probably won't forget."

I'm realy hoping to avoid any wild animal enounters.

I'm really not looking forward to finding out what I forgot to pack.

I'm hoping this week is spent helping the boys grow as young men and as a unit, and less time spent "babysitting".

It may not sound like it, but I'm looing forward to this experience. I do want to be an effective scoutmaster, and that means spending the time with the young men, and learning what I can do to help them acheive their goals, and in some cases, helping them figure out what their goals should be.

I should get back to getting ready to go. I'm sure I'll have some stories when I get back (at least I hope they'll be stories of good things and not bad things).

... Gone.

Spend $100 in gas, get a $1 worth of tacos FREE!

This Thursday, June 26th, take your gas receipt to a Jack in the Box, and they'll give you 2 tacos for FREE!

Wow Mr. Box, thanks for easing the gas pump pain.

It's tough...

Blogging is tough when you don't have a whole lot of time.

That's all I have time for right now, I hope to have some time soon.

Carry on...

Can't wait to try one...

Carl's Jr. has done it again! They've created a burger that I MUST eat! It's called a "Prime Rib Burger". It's their $6 burger pattie topped with thin sliced prime rib, grilled onions, and swiss cheese, served on a chiabatta bread bun.

Their new campaign for this burger involves a fake restaurant where regular people are brought in (set up), and they catch their reactions to eatting these burgers that they believe are worth $16!

You can see it all at fakerestaurant.com Shelby and Chris were my favorite.

I don't know when I'll get a chance to try one, but I hope it's soon! Here's where you can get a coupon for $1 off.

Scorching...

In our van there's a digital reading for the direction you're traveling and the outside temperature.

While driving Anna to the eye doctor in Ontario, the temp reading was 111 the whole time.

That's hot.

I heart AC!

My new calling (sort of)...

I'm still the first counselor in the young men's presidency, but instead of being the Varsity Coach, I'm now the Scoutmaster. It was made official a couple sundays ago. (now that I think about it, I need to make sure it gets changed at the scout office too.)

I never thought I'd be a scoutmaster. I only made it to second class as a youth (that's basically nothing). But working with the young men, and helping the previous scoutmaster so closely, it seems a little more do-able.

I was able to go to some "Leader Specific" training last saturday. Training was from 8am to 5pm. There was some really good stuff I learned during the training, and will hopefully be able to put it to some good use in my unit. This Friday night and Saturday, there is some more training. It's called "Outdoor Leader Skills". I'm not sure what we'll be doing, but I'm sure we'll be in the blazing hot sun for a lot of it. (Not really looking forward to that part.)

After that, all I'll need is some training called "New Leader Essentials" and I will be considered "trained" and will get to add a "trained" patch to my uniform. The next "NLE" will hopefully be in August.

Why my sudden interest in going through BSA training? (I was planning to do the training already as a Varsity Coach, but now I'm doing it as a Scoutmaster instead.) I'm doing the training because our YM program isn't going anywhere. The boys aren't really progressing too well, and we've lost a couple of them to inactivity. So as much as I think I know how to run a program, it's not working. Therefore, if the BSA has nearly 100 years of experience of working with boys, and if the church has such a strong tie with the BSA, there must be something there that I'm missing as an adult leader. And let me just say, that even with just my one day of BSA training, I feel like I have a whole new set of "tools" to work with and use. It was quite motivational.

Scout camp is coming up in less than two weeks. I kind of feel like things are mostly in order for that. There are still some things to figure out as a whole, but for the most part, I think we're on the right track. We're going to Camp Tahquitz for scout camp. I'll be incorporating some of my new training before and during camp, and then trying to incorporate as much of it as I can afterward. Then by the first of the next year, hopefully be a fully functioning boy-run program.

Anyway, just thought I'd give a little update on how that was all going.

UFC 85 report card...

Among the many other things that were going on last weekend, there was also a UFC PPV. It was UFC 85 Bedlam, at the O2 arena in London England. Because of it's location, the live airing of the fights was 12:00pm (noon) that Saturday. I needed to watch and record it on DVD so I could take it to Kevin's house on Sunday so he could watch it, and then he would send it to Kristi and Jason in Bullhead.

The fight card was stacked with great match ups. I'll get to that in a minute. Here's my report card...

The report card indicates my picks. The red I got wrong, the green I got right. There's an awful lot of red on there. Out of 11 fights, I got 6 of the winning fighters right. That's not too horrible.

Here are the official results...

My rants on the fights:

Matt Hughes vs. Thiago Alves : First of all, Thiago didn't make weight for the fight. He came in at 174 instead of 170. He has to cut a lot of weight to fight at 170, which makes him a big 170-er to begin with. Then add that he didn't look at all dehydrated, which is a common weight cutting technique, which to me says he didn't try that hard to lose that last 4 pounds. If you're not dehydrated, you retain a lot of your energy. There's a trend in fighting that an opponent will purposefully not make weight, so he retains his energy or size, and the guy he's fighting, who cut the weight, takes the fight anyway because he's spent the time training and cutting, and the guy with the extra weight now has an unfair advantage. Sure the guy that didn't cut the weight gets a percentage of his winnings taken away and/or fined, but he still gets the win. I don't like that. In addition to the fighter giving up a part of his winnings, I think the guy that can't make weight "forfeits" the fight, meaning he has the loss, and if his opponent takes the fight and loses, he still gets the "W" because he made weight when the other guy didn't. I think that would force guys to have to make weight. I hope that makes sense. There's a part of me that thinks Thiago knew that Matt would take the fight even if he didn't make the weight, and used that as an advantage in the fight.

Thiago had good punching, good take down defence, and just out fought Matt. The reality might be that Matt hasn't been able to keep up with the level of skill needed to be successful in the UFC anymore. He says he wants to fight Matt Serra before he retires, so I'm sure we'll see that this year sometime.

Brandon Vera vs. Fabricio Werdum: This fight was shaping up to be a war. There was going to be a lot of action and so on. I guess no one told the ref that these guys were going all out and that they can take the abuse. Shortly after the first round began, Fabricio found himself in a mount on Brandon and was unloading. Brandon looked to be defending well enough, though he wasn't able to do anything offensively, and before you know it, the ref stops the fight! What?! Right away you see Brandon upset at the stoppage, yelling at the ref, and complaining. Yes, the refs are there to protect the fighters from taking unnecessary damage when they aren't able to defend themselves anymore, but Brandon was defending, just not returning any punches. Man, that sucked. I'm sure we'll see Brandon again soon, he didn't get injured, and I'm sure he'll want to fight again to now get redemption for two fights (losses). Oh yeah, that was the first fight of the night, so it wasn't a great start for the PPV.

Michael Bisping came out guns blazin' and put Jason Day away rather quickly.

Marcus Davis and Mike Swick had a war! Swick had fast hands, and Davis' face was proof of that. Davis got beat up, or at least that's the story his face told. He hung in there though, and showed a lot of heart. Swick looked good, though he wasn't able to put Davis away. It was a good fight.

Nate Marquardt wasn't able to put Thales Leites away either. Thales' face told the same story Davis' did in his fight. He got beat up! Thales did land a few pretty devastating punches. One put Nate on his back for a moment, but I thought Nate, over all, dominated the fight. Unfortunately, Nate had not one, but TWO point taken away during the fight. One was for an illegal strike to the back of the head, though the replay clearly shows that it was not, and I missed the other one somehow (I must have had to help Anna at that time for something). With those 2 points gone, and the fight going to decision, Thales took the win. Man, that was lame too.

Martin Kapmann took care of Jorge Rivera pretty quickly with a choke in the first round. Kapmann has a kickboxing back round, but has terrific submission skills. He'll be contending for the belt soon, I'm sure.

Matt Wiman and Thiago Tavares had a very technical jiu jitsu style fight going for most of the first round. I like seeing two guys so well versed in MMA jiu jitsu trade positions and submission attempts. But in the first minute of the second round, it was a punch that ended the fight. A huge KO win for Matt.

We saw UFC newcomer Luiz Cane put Jason Lambert away in the first round with a TKO win.

We got to see a clip of UFC newcomer Kevin Burns triangle choke brazillian ju jitsu black belt Roan Carneiro. I believe it was the "submission of the night", meaning he got a bonus from the UFC.

We also got to see some clips of the Eddie Sanchez - Antoni Hardonk fight. I guess Eddie was getting the better of Hardonk, but Hardonk landed a huge punch that marked the beginning of the end for Sanchez, and gave Hardonk the TKO win.

We didn't see any of the Paul Taylor, Jess Liaudin fight. But I'm glad Paul Taylor won.

All in all, not a bad night of fights. There were definitely some unfortunate outcomes though, and that's never fun for the viewer or the fighters. I know my score card would look a whole lot greener if Nate and Brandon didn't have the referee mistakes interfere with the outcome. But that's how it goes.

The next UFC event is the season finals for the Ultimate fighter. That takes place Saturday, June 21st. We'll know the finalized fight card after Wednesday, the 18th, when we find out who the two finalists are. Should be good stuff.

Getting Caught Up...

We did some fun stuff last Saturday and Sunday, and I now have a little time to share that.

The fun thing we did on Saturday was take the family to a drive-in movie! We have some good friends in the ward that go pretty regularly, and they have encouraged us to go sometime. Kung Fu Panda was just released on Friday, so we thought we'd take the family to see it. We even invited our friends to come along. They eventually didn't go because one of their kids got sick, but we still went. The double feature was the new Indiana Jones movie. It's PG13, but we knew the kids would fall asleep, so we didn't worry about that (and yes they did).

One thing our friends said was to get there early. They like to get there by 6:30pm (the first movie starts at 8:20pm. Wow, two hours early? OK? I think we ended up getting there around 7:20, and indeed, most of the middle and closer spots were taken, but we found a good spot on the right side of the lot. We brought our camping chairs to sit in to watch the movies. I backed the van into our spot so we could open the back because there are speakers in the doors. We brought a couple $5 pizzas from Little Caesar's for dinner, as well as our own pre-popped pop corn and other goodies. After dinner we put the kids in pajamas so if they did fall asleep, they were good to go.

Kung Fu Panda was Excellent! Very Cool. There was no problem hearing the movie because most every one else there was also watching it out of their cars, and had their volumes way up too. We were parked next to some very nice people on the left, and the people on the right never got out of their car, but they were probably nice too.

As soon as Kung Fu Panda was over, Liam was really tired and went in the van and fell asleep in his seat. Jennan wasn't too far behind Liam in knocking out. Tegan had a bottle once Jennan was out, and she too fell asleep. That left Duncan. He stayed awake through probably the first third of the movie before his eyelids won their battle. Even Anna was knocked out for a time during Indiana Jones, but once she woke up, she stayed up for the rest of it. Indiana Jones ended a little before midnight. We packed up, headed home, and knew that we would be back. Good times.

Sunday:

Just before church started, I was told to speak to the bishop. Turns out they were calling me to be the scoutmaster in our ward. That was fine. I've been the Boy Scout Varsity Coach for a few years (though I never really worked that program, I generally acted as an assistant scoutmaster), and knew they didn't have anyone else to call. The bishop wanted to make sure I knew they were going forward with that change before it was announced over the pulpit. Other than that, church was pretty normal.

After church, we packed the van to head on out to the Foutz compound in El Monte. We were going to be doing a short birthday party for Tegan. Sunday, Tegan tuned one year old! My, how time flies. Anna made a cake (before we left to the movies the day before), we would have some ice cream, and that was about it. (Cal State L.A.'s Geology department was having their annual banquet that evening, and we were going to that. More about that later) We got their just after 2:30pm, and let the kids play a bit before we dished cake and ice cream. Tegan opened a few presents, the kids played some more, and then it was time to go. Short and sweet.

We took the kids up to Anna's folks' house to be babysat while we went to the Geology banquet. Anna has some very good friends from her time at CSULA, and it was nice to see and visit with them at the banquet. Time flies when you're having fun, and pretty soon, dinner was done, and awards for current students handed out, and it was time for us to go. There was a keynote speaker, but it was already 9pm, and we needed to get the kids and drive home, so we didn't stay for that.

Yesterday (Monday), the big thing was the faucet exploding, but that night, Duncan's tooth was really wiggly, and Anna convinced Duncan to let her try and pull it out. Yep, she used the ol' dental floss method again. Duncan was a bit more concerned this time, but still let mom do what she had to do. After a couple failed attempts to secure the floss around the tooth, Anna finally got it all set. She told Duncan "I'll count to 3; 1 - 2 - " and Duncan says "wait wait wait!" We chuckled. Then Anna told Duncan, "When you're ready, let me know. Are you ready?" Duncan nodded and Anna yanked without any warning. Duncan let out a small yell. And the tooth was out. Duncan rinsed his mouth, Anna got a baggie, and it was time for bed. Then this morning, Duncan was up doing his regular routine. I asked him if there was anything under his pillow? He said no. I said "Did the tooth fairy come?" His face totally changed, he ran back in his room where Liam was still in bed, and I can hear him telling Liam he thinks the tooth fairy came. He comes running back out of his room, hands behind his back. "Dad, I have some very, very, very, good news!" "You do?" I asked. He pulls the baggie from behind him, and shows me the dollar the tooth fairy left him. Fun stuff. He held onto that baggie till it was time to go to the bus stop.

I think that covers the main stuff from the past few fun days. Honorable mentions go to Anna, who put up a ceiling fan in our room, and put a new light fixture in the boys room Saturday morning. Also, Duncan tested for a rank advancement at Karate on Saturday, but I don't think he'll advance just yet. I'll have to work with him a little more. We'll find out this Saturday if he advances.

So far... (w/new perspective)

My day so far...

Got the kids up, fed them breakfast.

Made Duncan's lunch: peanut butter and jelly on a hamburger bun (we're out of bread), Kool Aid Jammer, and a go-gurt.

Helped Duncan get ready for school, walked to the bus stop and back.

Fed Tegan her breakfast.

Started Laundry. Forgot the take the travel size tissue pack out of my sunday pants pocket, so now there's wet tissue all over that load going into the drier. The lint screen fill be full after that load for sure! Also didn't know there were about 20 pennies in one of the kids' pockets as well. That was one abused load of laundry.

Folding and putting away laundry.

Sat down to blog about the weekend...

...Thought I heard one of the kids go into the bathroom and turn the faucet on. Jennan is pretty good about washing her hands throughout the day, Liam will too now and then. The water for that faucet always sounds like it's coming out very fast, so nothing unusual there. But then somehow my brain starts to figure out that I hear the sound of water hitting the floor, that I didn't hear the door open or close, and I get up to investigate.

I open the door, and there's a geyser shooting up from where the cold water handle used to be! We're talking full blown geyser; water hitting the ceiling and all walls in our guest bathroom (sink and toilet). My first instinct was to put my palm over the gushing water to keep it from spewing out, but just as quickly, know that that never works. So I quickly get to the shut off valves under the sink and cut off the water. Water continues to rain down on me from the ceiling as I look at the half inch or so of water now on the floor, and realize our laminate flooring in the hall will be in jeopardy if I don't get this water up soon. I go to the hall closet and grab our two beach blanket towels, two other beach towels, and a bath towel. All but the bath towel go on the floor immediately, and I use the bath towel to start wiping walls and the ceiling, the medicine cabinet and other small cabinet in there. My outhouse picture on the wall had water in it, and so on. I get everything wiped off, get the towels outside, and finally look to see what the heck happened to the handle? It looks like it just snapped. Just broke. No one was in there using it when it happened, so it didn't get tweaked some weird way. The only thing I can think of is if there are two metals there that don't work well together, making one brittle. Other than that, I really don't know.

And it's barely noon!

I already had a bunch of stuff to try and do today. I'll be adding: replace bathroom faucet to the list now. Gee, thanks bathroom.




Guess what I did though... I grabbed the camera really quick after putting the towels down. So here's what it looked like...

Soaking up the water.

The medicine cabinet took the brunt of the blow.

The ceiling.

The outhouse picture was a goner.

The busted faucet.

Hopefully I'll get another chance to sit down and tell you about our weekend. It was fun.

New perspective...

Anna came home and we talked about how crazy it was that the faucet just broke on it's own. Then Anna said, "It's a good thing it didn't happen yesterday." Then it occurred to me how lucky we really were. We were gone from home for most of the day. If it had happened at the same time, just a day earlier, we would have found it after a couple hours! That would have been bad. But had it happened soon after we left home for the rest of the day (more on that in a future post), it could have been disastrous! Hour upon hour of fast flowing water pouring through the whole house. That would have ruined a lot of things.

After thinking of all that could have happened and didn't, we are feeling lucky indeed.

Not making it to the Rendezvous...

Last year in April, I went to my first scout Mountain Man Rendezvous (MMR). Our BSA council, the California Inland Empire Council, hosts an MMR each year. It's for the Varsity and Venturing Scouts. I didn't know much about it, but I did know about some of the activities:

(the links are from the BSA Imperial Council in San Diego)
Black powder rifle shooting
bow and arrow shooting
tomahawk throw
knife throw
flint and steel
caber toss
rock throw (cannon ball throw)
and others.

That was enough to get the boys interested. Those who attend are encouraged to dress in period clothing (1810-1840), though it's not mandatory.

Also there would be a "trading blanket". The original MMRs were all about trading, their "currency" was what they brought to the rendezvous. Mountain Men (trappers) brought their pelts to trade for their other essentials. At the scout MMR, the boys are encouraged to bring hand made (or not) items to trade for what ever is on the blanket. There were beads and feathers for necklaces, Indian chokers, knives, etc. There were also cans of soda, candy bars, and other snacks. That was the only place to get those items if you didn't bring your own. If you didn't bring items to trade, money was acceptable too.

I helped the young men put together some leather pouches to trade as one of our mutual activities preceding the MMR. Neither young man remembered to bring his pouch.

The 2 boys (out of the 4 that said they were going), had a great time. So did I and the other leader. I also got to do many of the activities the boys did. The other leader was just happy to be out doors, and took a long nap that Saturday afternoon.

This year, the MMR got moved to June 6th & 7th. We put it on the calendar. I had a couple more boys that turned 14 since the last one, but I also had one move, and a couple go less active and decide that they were too cool for church and scouts. On top of that, our scoutmaster was recently put into the bishopric (with no replacement), and the young men's president has had personal family issues that have taken him away from his calling the past month. The former scoutmaster assured me that he'd be able to go to the MMR as the second leader (he went last year too). But about 2 weeks ago he said he'd be gone for work. We're in a struggling ward, so available male leadership is spread pretty thin. Couple that with the few boys that can go, not fully committing to go. "I think so." and "maybe" were the most common replies. Then all of a sudden, with a week before the MMR, 2 of the boys are wondering why we're not planning anything for the MMR? I mentioned their responses to whether or not they were going, and I wasn't going to plan a trip and have no one show up (it's happened before). I gave them 48 hours to recruit one more boy. If they could do that, then I would find another adult. They waited till the last minute and were told maybe by one boy. He would tell them for sure on tuesday and mutual. He didn't show up.

I'm not completely blameless. I've been looking forward to the MMR all year, but with the changes and turmoil in the YM presidency, it's all kind of fallen on me to keep the program going. That includes scout camp that takes place starting the 28th of this month for 7 days. My mind has been overwhelmed with all of it. The scouting doesn't come to me naturally, I didn't do much scouting as a youth myself, and then to have to be a scout leader has not been easy. Because of all of that, the MMR trip needed to come together naturally, and it just didn't. So no Mountain Man Rendezvous for me this year.

There will be another chance for our Varsity scouts to do some of those activities in November. It's called the "Turkey Shoot". Probably because it happens in November, there's no turkey's shot. It's actually a service project to maintain the council's scout camp in the off season, but they get out the bows and arrows, tomahawks, knives, black powder rifles, etc. for the scouts to have another opportunity to do those activities during the year. Our Team (troop) hasn't gone to this in the past, but I think we'll have to this year.

I already had it as a goal for this year, but all of this has reinforced that goal, that I need to be a "trained" scout leader. I'm hoping that receiving such training will help me create a program that runs more naturally and fosters leadership in the young men in our ward. Next Saturday, the 14th, I'll be at training all day, and hopefully the following weekend as well. I think I'll need all I can get before scout camp rolls around.

Wow, this turned into a rather lengthy entry for not having any pictures. Sorry about that.

That's Hot... (update)

Not long ago I posted a blog with a coupon for the jalapeno chicken sandwich at Carl's Jr. You can see it HERE. Along with some thoughts on chicken sandwiches in general.

Yesterday I had the chance to partake of the jalapeno chicken sandwich for the first time.

As I mentioned in the other post, the type of food coupons that I prefer are the "buy one get one free" type. The other day we got a mailer advertisement with coupons for Carl's, and there was a buy 1 get 1 free coupon for the jalapeno chicken sandwich. Anna and I had an opportunity to use it yesterday.

Anna took all of her jalapenos off, but it was still spicy from the jalapeno juice and few seeds that were left behind. She didn't think it was bad, but she doesn't think she'd get it again. I decided I needed to eat mine with all the jalapenos that came on it intact.

I've read that as people get older they can tolerate more "heat" or spicier foods because their taste buds "die". I don't like that thought. I like to think it's my mental ability to control my reaction to the heat. The heat from the jalapenos never got to where I couldn't take it anymore. Yes it was spicy, but dare I say, I'm learning to like the flavor of jalapeno. That doesn't mean I wan to eat them with every meal or anything like that, but I don't think I'd adamantly avoid them as I've done in the past.

I already like Carl's Jr.'s grilled chicken sandwiches, so putting some spicy stuff on there didn't make me not like it.

That's my update.

Coupon for a free drink with the purchase of a jalapeno chicken sandwich.

UFC 85 picks...

The UFC is starting the early summer with a flurry of events. The next one being UFC 85 this Saturday, June 7th.

It seems like there are two types of UFC PPV formats: One is get a hugly anticipated main event or two, and fill the undercard with relative unknowns, or guys coming off losses, or a lot of dubut fighters no one knows. The second one is have a non-title fight between a high profile fighter or two, and fill the undercard with a bunch of other well known and well liked fighters, so the PPV seems worth the expence.

This UFC 85 feels like the second type. There's no belt on the line. But there are a lot of great fighters all through out the fight card. I like seeing guys I know fight, and I like to pick them to win. With this fightcard though, I've had to make a lot of choices betwen two fighters I normally would have sided with if they were fighting other guys.

I've tried a different format to show my picks, hopfully it's not too small. But these are my picks...

In the main event I have Matt Hughes winning. I think he will have rededicated himself to training and that we'll see him go back to his roots of brutal takedowns and ground and pound. Almost against anyone else I would have chosen Thiago Alves to win. He's a good fighter, and fun to watch.

Michael Bisbing vs. Jason Day. I don't know Jason Day, but that doesn't matter too much because I think Bisping is going to be really hard to beat at 185lbs.

Probably the toughest fight to pick in the whole PPV is the fight between Marcus Davis and Mike Swick. I'm a fan of both of these fighters. Mike Swick's early UFC career saw him finishing fight after fight in super fast fashion in the middleweight (185lbs.) division. As he moved up the ranks, wins were getting difficult, and losses began to happen. He's dropped down into the welterweight division, and with a less than stellar win against Josh Burkman, he's looking to get back to his winning ways. As a fan, I hope he does too. Marcus Davis has almost an opposite story. He's a boxer turned MMA fighter, and early in his MMA career, he was a bit one dimentional and lost a couple fights. He dedicated his training to learning the ground game (wrestling and jujitsu), and since then has been winning fights. Not just with his boxing skills, but with his new submission skills as well. He's a natual welterweight, and is strong for his size. I route for him on a continuing basis. But I had to make a choice. Ultimatly I went with Mike Swick. I think he needs a good fight and a strong win to put him back in belt contention. One thing I've noticed recently in the UFC is, even if you lose a big fight, if it's a great fight, you don't fall far in the rankings, and for a fighter on the way up, it almost pushes them forward like a win would (only not as far as a win would). I guess that boils down to excitment and respect for ones heart in the fight. I hope this fight does that for both of these guys. Mike could use the win more though, but that's just my opinion.

Another fight I'm looking forward to a lot is the return of Brondon Vera after his loss to Tim Silvia. In that fight, Brandon busted his hand early on, and that distracted him enough that he couldn't do anything else but survive. He lost by decision. He's healed up and ready to get back to his winning ways, and moving up the heavyweight division ladder. He'll have to beat Fabricio Werdum to get there though. Fabricio is not as well known, but he does have a current win over the popular Gabriel Gonzaga. Fabricio and Brandon have very similar styles and skills. It will be interesting to see who will put this fight away first. I'm a big fan of Brandon, so I'm pulling for him in this fight.

Here are some of my other picks-

I like Martin Kapman and think he'll beat Jorge Rivera on the ground.

I think Jason Lambert will want to get back in the win collumn with a win over Luiz Cruz.

I think Eddie Sanchez will be able to take out Antoni Hardonk.

Matt Wiman will probably find a way to win against Thiago Tavares.

Because of all the fights as a whole, this has all the makings of one of the best PPVs this year. We'll see if that's what happens.

It happened twice!... (w/update)

For those that need the "cut to the chase", both of my MMA events were cut off at the end this weekend!

For the details, keep reading.

If you've been keeping up on my blog, you know that there were two MMA events this past weekend that I was planning to watch. If you haven't been keeping up on my blog, first of all, why not?, and second, the two events were EliteXC's network debut on CBS, and the WEC on the Versus channel. EliteXC was Saturday night, and WEC Sunday night. I wanted to make sure I didn't miss them, so I set the TiVo to record them.

Saturday night, Jason and Kristi were over and spending the night before they headed home to Bullhead City, Arizona. They are MMA fans too, so we started watching from the beginning. The event had already started, but because of the TiVo, we can start watching from the beginning. There were some pretty good fights. Gina Carano's fight was really good. That was my first time seeing her fight MMA. I've seen her fight Muy Thai before, and if you search "muy thai" in Google image, the second image is of Gina as "Crush" from American Gladiators.

Gina Carano

Another fight I was interested in was Scott Smith challenging for the middleweight belt against the champ Robbie Lawler. Both of these guys have previously fought in the UFC. It was an ok fight. Neither guy looked that great. It ended with a poke in the eye of Scott Smith. He said he couldn't see out of that eye, but wanted to keep fighting. The ringside doctor stopped the fight. Turns out, telling the Doc. you can't see is a bad idea if you want to keep fighting. Oops. After that fight, was the main event featuring Kevin "Kimbo Slice" Ferguson, a street fighter turned pro MMA fighter. I was looking forward to seeing him fight, just to see how long his opponent would last.

Kevin "Kimbo Slice" Ferguson

But guess what happened?... the show was scheduled for 2 hours, so the TiVo records for that 2 hours, but the show is running late and the last fight didn't record! GGGGGRRRRR!!! You can set your TiVo to record past the end time, but why would I think to do that? It was on a national network channel! Don't they keep a tight show schedule? Man, I was so ticked. I haven't done so yet, but I'll have to try and find it on youtube so I can see it. Poopy.





Well, at least I'll have the WEC fights to make it all better Sunday night!...





There's no point in trying to watch fights when the kids are awake. Not so much because they'll see it (they don't really care if it's not one of their shows), but because they'll make too much noise, and need too much help with whatever, that I can't just sit and enjoy the fights. So it's usually best to wait till they're in bed. The two fights I was looking forward to the most were the two Championship fights. One for the Bantamweights (135 lbs.), and the other at Featherweight (145 lbs.). There was a pretty good Light heavyweight (205 lbs.) fight that saw a 6' 6" guy get knocked out during some ground and pound by a shorter guy. The bantamweight championship fight was really good. Both fighters had great stand up, and the majority of the fight was on the feet. There were times when the fight went to the ground, and the Champ, Miguel Torres, like an "octopus in quicksand" (his words), on the ground, so his opponent didn't want to be there long. The fight ended after the 3rd round due to the challengers right eye swelling shut. It was decided that he couldn't continue. I agree. He wasn't going to win that fight anyway, and it's better to stop while one eye can still see.

WEC Bantamweight champ- Miguel Torres

That meant the next fight was the Featherweight Championship featuring the Champ, Urijah Faber vs. MMA veteran Jens Pulver.







But guess what?... It cuts off!!! Just after Jens enters the cage, and before Urijah makes his way to the cage, it stops. NO WAY!! Not Again! I can't even begin to tell you how bummed I was. Luckily, Versus channel was re airing the fights immediately afterward, so I set the TiVo to record those fights too, and set the stop at 30 minutes after the fights were scheduled to end. A championship fight is five, 5 minute rounds, with 60 seconds between rounds, so hopefully, if it went the distance, it still records it all.



I hope that happens less from now on.

**fight spoilers in this update**

I went to watch the second WEC recording I set to record, and it too was cut off at the end! The first show going over made the second show run even longer over it's sheduled time!

Luckily for me, there are people that put stuff on youtube really fast. I was able to find the Kimbo Slice fight. Looks like if you can survive the first round with Kimbo, you might have a chance if you protect your chin. Kimbo had his first taste of the receiving end of some ground and pound, and it wore him out pretty quickly. Luckily for Kimbo, the ref stopped the fight either due to a cut on his opponents ear or the ref thought his opponent was not defending himself. My only thing about that is, that was the third time the fighter was taking that kind of damage, and he was able to continue fighting the other times, why stop it this time? There was also a time in the fight that Kimbo was pinned down in the second round, and he was not able to defend himself, and took dozens of blows, and the ref allowed it to continue. It felt a whole lot like EliteXC wanted to make sure their money maker won that fight. whether that's true or not, that's what it felt like to me.

The WEC fights were up on youtube as well. It took a little longer to find, but I found it. One of the things about a list of videos you're scanning, is you see more than you want. I was looking for the fight, but also saw that there were 5 rounds of fight listed. That meant that I knew before watching the first round, the fight has at least 5 rounds. It makes it a little less exciting. The 5th round was the most exciting because even though it's the last round, you have no idea if it goes the distance or finished by one of the fighters. It did go the distance, and Urijah was able to do more damage in each round, so he won by unanimous decision. It was actually a pretty action packed fight all though out. Good stuff.