UFC 94 Picks

Main Card Bouts:
-Georges St. Pierre vs. B.J. Penn Decision
-Lyoto Machida vs. Thiago Silva Decision
-Karo Parisyan vs. Dong Hyun kim Decision
-Nathan Diaz vs. Clay Guida Decision
-Stephan Bonnar vs. Jon Jones TKO

Preliminary Bouts:
-Jon Fitch vs. Akihiro Gono Decision
-Jake O'Brien vs. Christian Wellisch Decision
-Chris Wilson vs John Howard Submission
-Manny Gamburyan vs. Thiago Tavares Decision
-Matt Arroyo vs. Dan Cramer TKO

Weight Loss

I'm coming back into the sport off a layoff. I was bad sick during that layoff - hospitalized on oxygen for part of it - and I'm way overweight at the moment.

For all the biggest loser fans out there, or all those trying to diet:

I lost 14 pounds in six two hour MMA classes over the last two weeks. That's actually almost scary.

Yesterday in the shower, I felt a bizzare sensation and slapped at my own leg, thinking one of our arachnid or insectoid planetary roommates was running down my leg (I hate bugs, I lived in a buggy, drafty old house as a kid and they just aren't my favorite neighbors)

Turned out it was just water running down the channel between my calf muscles, suddenly exposed by the dehydration of the week's workouts. That's fucked.

Why?

People who watch our workouts tend to roll their eyes or shake their heads.

I've been asked some variant of the question, "Why would you want to do that on a Tuesday night?" more times then I can conveniently count sans mechanical assistance.

Rocky Balboa's famous answer: "Hey, yo, because I can't sing or dance."

It's hard to describe. I guess the rationale of a given fighter, like the proper way to play a pair of nines, depends. For some, believe it or not, it's the scant money: "I'm gonna work out anyway, and if I fight one fight a year for 500 and 500 that pays for the gym, anyway."

500 and 500, by the way, is five hundred dollars that's yours when they lock you in the cage, five hundred more dollars if you win.

1000 clams is not that much for a fight under the NSAC unified rules of mixed martial arts, which require only the use of a thin 4 oz glove and allow full-on elbows and knees as well as punches and kicks. There are guys at this gym that take home $1,500 bucks a month from their day jobs, though, and for them the chance of an extra few thousand a year must seem like a sweet deal.

During the winter, with the patch on ice, this is not too far removed from my reality - but I am not one of these guys.

There are others in the gym who have a burning need to fight - some sort of deep seated external need drives them. These are the once-bullied, the crime victims, the youngest brothers, the sons of single mothers. There were days and weeks in high school when I had a shitty time -I think everyone did - but I am not one of these guys, either.

The only way I can really explain it - why I endure in something that is routinely frustrating, routinely painful, something I get no promises and no reimbursement from, is to say this: In the ring, I completely understand my world. There is no background noise, there is no background thought. I get to feel what it is like to have one purpose and no distractions, and that's priceless to me. Any monetary or physical benefits are cool, of course, but I have to place them secondary.