Max Bishop's Fight Night 17: November to Dismember

The man and the LEGEND!

I'm a big fan of the UFC. No, actually, I'm a HUGE fan of the UFC. UFC to me, is what Football is to Aaron Riddle. Those of you who know Aaron, know that he lives and breaths football. Aaron is the only person I know who can sit down in front of a XBOX console with Madden 2008 and enter a time warp. He eventually looks up and wonders why it is dark all of a sudden when it was light outside.

Anyway, For those of you not familiar. The UFC is a mixed martial arts event. Mixed martial arts is where there are two fighters in a ring or more commonly a cage. These two fighters are skilled in various areas of fighting(i.e. boxing, wrestling, grappling, judo, jiu jitsu, karate, and etc.) They fight in usually three or five minute rounds. The fight is won by submissions(usually signalled by a tap out or verbal tap out) a knock out, a referee stoppage, or by judges score. There are rules such as no biting, no gouging, no strikes to the groin, no strikes to the back of the head, no kicking an opponent in the head when he is down. Basic safety stuff.

Okay, so you get the basics. Max Bishop holds these matches every so often. This is the first I've gotten a chance to attend. I must say this was one of the best local fights I've attended in a long time. Twenty bucks general admission and we got to see well over four hours of fighting in several weight classes. It was good seating with a pretty decent view. There was some good action and some good submissions as well. There were several different folks from all over the area fighting. Even a local boy was in on the action. Zach Hammonds (hope I spelled that right) handed his oppenent a beat down and ended the fight by a nice guillotine choke in which his oppenent quickly tapped out. Good Job Zach! Our incumbent Judge, Ron Hunter, was there as well as his son who was helping wrap fighters hands.

I have to admit, being the fanboy I am, the highlight of it all was meeting the legendary UFC Hall of Famer Royce Gracie. It was an awesome experience for me. I mean, I go to this Pizza Place in Bono, Fox's Den Pizza(pretty good by the way) and there he sits at a table. NO security. NO big roped off areas. Just Royce Gracie sitting there. I was speechless. For those of you who really know me, Speechless doesn't happen to me. I'm never at a loss for words. I just sat down right across from him and just looked at him for a while. Finally I just reached across, shook his hand, and said " Hey Mr. Gracie, its really cool to meet you." We spoke for a bit and I even convinced some dude eating pizza to take a pic of he and I together. Mr. Gracie was incredibly humble and soft spoken, yet really intense and intimidating at the same time. He wasn't a big man, a little taller than me and a little heavier. But this was the man I'd watched in the very first UFC's. I watched him completely walk through all his competition, some of them outweighing him by literally hundreds of pounds. He is like a modern day Bruce Lee to me. Just so you understand, in my book, its God, Jesus, then Bruce Lee. Just that simple. I can't express how awesome it was to meet him and how great of a time I truly had at the fights.

So, I'd like to thank Joey Perry and Max Bishop for bringing this living legend to our area. It was an opporunity of a lifetime for me. I truly had a great time and I'm sure my friends and I will be back to see more.

Oh, and thank you to another great guy and pretty famous in his time himself, Jim Smothers. I appreciate the help at the front door and appreciate the training you gave me back in the early nineties!