Joey and I are driving home from Wisconsin. We went up there for some fishing, but the weather just didn’t cooperate. We ended up spending the night in a hotel with a pool, so him and Ashton (Pat Flanigan’s son) got to play around there and we also hit two video arcades. Saturday night we also watched Transformers 2 for the second time. So even though we didn’t get to fish, we had a pretty good time.
Last Friday night, my County Fair had some fights. County Fairs are kind of like main streets in small towns, they just seem to be losing their popularity. The Fair Board wanted to do something this year that was different and attract some new people; so they had some amateur fights. I helped as much as I could but Monte Cox ended up doing most of the work. As most of you know Monte is my former manager and the promoter of Extreme Challenge. The fights went well, I know the fair brought in a bunch of new people and Bad Boy Mowers ended up giving me a battery-powered ATV. BBM and I have struck up a deal so you will hear more from them down the road. Here’re some pictures of the ATV:
I want to thank Chad at Mullins Race Engines for putting all of this together for me.
We had a lot of guys fighting this weekend, I don’t know all the results, but those should be posted on the HIT Squad website here soon.
Finally, I ran across this interesting quote from John Wayne and I just wanted to share it with you:
“Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.”
Last week I went on a hunt with my father-in-law, Jim, and Laserlyte. We went down to Paul Calhoun’s ranch down in Texas, close to Palestine. Got to meet up with some old friends (Dave, Aaron and Larry) and do some hunting down in the good ol’ Lone Star State. To be honest, I love most everything about Texas and if I had to pick my family up and move, I would head down there.
I have hunted with Laserlyte before and it’s always a good time. Last time we used Glock 10mm, this time we used a Bowtech crossbow. This episode will once again be on Keith Warren’s outdoor show, The High Road. When I find out when that will air, I’ll let you all know. Here are a few pictures from our hunt:
On the forums, we’ve been talking about a video of a 72-year old woman getting hit with a taser. I’m sure you’ve heard about it on the news and, if you haven’t seen the video yet, please watch it and then give me your opinion on what you just watched. You can read the story and find a link to the video HERE. There’s been quite a debate on the forums on whether the police officer was justified or just acting out of anger.
Here’s another funny thing I found on the forum, it actually looks like President Obama shot footage for this; but it could just be clever editing. The cartoon has a little bit of truth to it and it’s quite funny:
Pat just posted this blog on his website about our trip last week. I was hoping he’d have it done a little earlier so I could add it to my blog yesterday, but if you want to read it, just click on the link below. -matt
Well, I’ve been busy. I just got back from Texas on a hog hunt with Laserlyte. I’ll talk more about that next week after I get some pictures. Last Monday, I went out with Pat Flanigan to meet up with Browning. Winchester was awful close so Pat picked up a new shotgun and also shot for some commercials. I helped out as much as I could, both mentally and whenever he needed a hand. As most of you have probably heard I think my sport is 50% mental and 50% physical and I think Pat’s sport is the same way. One thing I’ve said on here before is that there’s two types of people in this world, there’s people that think they can and they’re people that think they can’t.. they’re both right. When I wasn’t helping Pat, I talked with Browning a little bit. We came up with an agreement and now I am part of the family. You’ll be seeing more of them down the road and quite possibly me on their hunting show. Here is a picture of some of the guys I met out there that get the work done:
Well, last night we had the Strikeforce event and as most of you know, Robbie lost from a guillotine choke. We knew that was Jake’s bread and butter and the gameplan was definitely not to let him get ahold of Robbie’s neck. In the opening of the round, Jake went for a takedown and then even a reshot and put a lot of effort into trying to take Robbie down. Robbie defended it all well and when he broke apart from him, Robbie felt confident. With all the effort Jake put into the takedown, Robbie knew that would have been hard on Jake mentally. Then the next time they got together Robbie even thought that he felt Jake breathing heavy. All that had a lot to do with why Robbie felt so confident clinching with him. That was another reason why Robbie was pressing. We (Matt Pena and I) didn’t want Robbie pressing the fight, it’s just so easy to take somebody down and strike with somebody if they are trying to come into you. But Robbie felt confident and wanted to press a little bit. It was one of those things where Robbie just felt like he could put his glove on Jake and end the fight. When the fight was over, Robbie knew he had made a few small mistakes and in this game you CAN’T make a big mistake or put two or three small mistakes together. This was a catch-weight fight, so Jake will go back down and Robbie will go back up and to be honest, I really don’t think this changes much for Robbie down the road. The Arlovski fight sure didn’t go the way I thought it would, but this is a game of big hitters. And Arlovski’s style of throwing those front kicks doesn’t match up well with a big hitter. All in all, I think it was a good card. I talked to a few of the fans, they said that the production quality and pre-fight hype was nothing like a UFC event.
A couple of weeks ago I talked about some people from my hometown (a small farming community) betting against me, well here is one of those guys that has bet against me twice. Here is a guy I’m going to call “Shorty”, standing to the right of Patrick Flanigan. This is the second time “Shorty” has bet against me and actually I would have called him a good friend. A couple of months before my fight he bet Patrick $100 that I was going to lose. We went there to get Pat’s money as I’m one of those guys that, if I bet, I always pay and, as some of the people on the forums know, if I win a bet I also expect to be paid.
Pat’s in town, later on this week we’re going to go up to Utah to visit Browning/Winchester and let Pat film a few commercials and he’s also going to try and break two of his world records. I’m going out just to try and help out, I think Pat’s sport is a lot like mine in that it’s just as much mental as it is physical. When I heard Pat talk about how it was going to be hard to break these world records, this was the first thing I told him, “There are two types of people in this world, those that think they can and those that think they can’t. You know what, they’re both right.” Spending a lot of my time in the gym, one of the first things I figured out a long time ago is that your body will do so much more than your mind will let it. All these world records are Pat’s already, so that right there is something huge he has to overcome. You can find a lot of motivation to go out and break someone else’s world record, breaking your own is just not quite the same. But as Pat knows he need to keep pushing himself and if he doesn’t break it somebody else down the road will. Pat and I both know that being at the top is sometimes a hard place to find motivation.
We had a great time on vacation, but glad to be home. Check in with you guys next week. -matt
Well, Tuesday we went to the doctor and we are now sure that Audra is with child. They said the due date was January 9th. So I’m very excited and have been asking for another child since Hanna was born. All went well at the appointment and I’ll keep you all informed.
Next thing, I want to thank all my fans and most importantly my forum members for the good times out in las Vegas. It was great to see a lot of you again and meet some of you for the first time. My next fight should be closer, I’m hoping it will be around St. Louis, and let’s hope we can do the same thing then.
I caught this on the forum and then found out it was on some other forums as well. These statements never came out of my mouth:
“I went out there and followed the gameplan perfectly, I worked with Mark Fiore a lot during camp and it payed off. I controlled the pace of fight and dealt the most damage, that’s what I feel won me the fight.”
As most of you know, I trained at Jeremy’s and up at Sean’s for this fight, I knew my wrestling was going to be better than Serra’s, so a gameplan with Fiore was never really talked about.
“I want the winner of GSP/Alves”
Not that I wouldn’t want to fight the winner between those two, but definitely never said that and I wouldn’t say anything like that without talking to DW first.
“At this moment in time I’m a free agent, I went and sat down with Dana after the fight and discussed a few things, and I can tell you this I’ve got one more big fight left in me and its going to have to be against the winner of the GSP/Alves fight this July. Nothing else makes sense right now, I can’t really get myself motivated for anything else at this point in my career. I feel my chances against either guy are as good as anyones right now.”
DW and I have not sat down and talked about anything yet. That statement is totally false. I don’t know where these quotes came from, but they are not the truth.
I went back and watched the Rashad fight again, and I think it comes down to bad coaching. In the prefight press conference, I heard Rashad say that he didn’t bring anybody in who would resemble Machida’s style. When I heard that, I knew that there might be some problems. That is probably a big reason why Rashad didn’t do very well in the striking area. I also think Rashad should have been coached on using his wrestling talent. He didn’t shoot one takedown that I can remember and he just made it a sparring match. If I was to coach Rashad against Machida, I would have told him to make it a fight, use his wrestling and groundwork to really dictate the match. Not just go out and spar with him. I think Rashad could have done a lot better in that fight. I’m not saying he should have won, but he’s a lot better than he showed on Saturday.
Here is the banner from the fight, in case you didn’t get a good look at it. I’ve got one extra, so I might do some type of giveaway with it, but I haven’t decided yet:
Tomorrow, I leave for a quick family vacation and I won’t be around on Monday for a blog. So this will be it until after Robbie’s fight. So until then we’ll see you later and maybe we’ll see some of you in St. Louis supporting Robbie. -matt
Well, I’ve got a lot to say about the entire trip; but I don’t know if I can remember it all now. Maybe I’ll piece it together over the next couple of weeks or post some added updates down the road.
I came in this fight feeling big so I didn’t know how weight loss would be. Thursday, before my last practice of the night, I was 5.5 pounds over. I worked out for six rounds, the last three with plastics on, then sat for ten minutes and just let my body continue to sweat. I wasn’t going to check my weight that night, but at the very end I decided to and was glad I did. Thursday night, at about 10:30 PM, I ended up being only about 2.5 pounds over. Which is a very big deal for me, because it means the day before weigh-ins I get to eat something. Went up to my room and had a protein shake, half a pickle, four slices of tomato and a handful of shredded lettuce. To put that many calories in my body, the night before weigh-ins, is usually unheard of for me. I guess my hard work was going to pay off.
Friday morning I woke up early, 6:50 AM to be exact, first thing that jumped in my mind was to just suit up in my plastics and work out, while everyone else was still sleeping. I thought about going to the spa and getting on a bike or Aerodyne machine. Soon after that I just started to pray and finally I came up with the notion of “God, if I should work out then give me a sign.” Five minutes later, my wife wakes up, tells me she’s going to go for a walk down the strip, and I figured I had just received my answer. I suited up in my plastics, with my sweats over the top, and hit the Vegas strip following my wife and Tysha (Audra’s friend from Hillsboro). We walked for an hour and a half, when I came back into the MGM, the air conditioning felt good and I was tired. Went up to the room, laid on the floor for about ten minutes, jumped up and took a shower, and then went and weighed in on the official scale. I expected to be a pound or two over, but to my pleasant surprise I was half a pound under. Once again a first for me, the morning of a weigh-in I’m usually anywhere from 3-5 pounds over. So weigh-ins were easy this time around, which I’ve always said is half the battle.
Friday night, several of my forum members got together at a karaoke bar. I got to meet up with many of them for the first time. It was nice to finally put some faces with the personalities that I’ve seen on my forum. Here’s a photo of Boomer, the forum member who organized the karaoke party, there are more in the forums:
The morning of the fight, I woke up and had breakfast with my buddies Paul and David. Went back to the room, laid down for about three hours and when I woke up we were close to walking down for the fights. One thing different about this fight was going to be the addition of Marcus Luttrell (author of Lone Survivor). Marcus wanted to talk to me about the mental side of things. With him being a Navy SEAL, what he had to say was very interesting. Actually more than just interesting, he helped out a lot. We talked for a couple of hours before we walked down to the fights. Everything else was pretty normal. Security came up to the room at 6:00, picked up me and my cornermen and walked us straight to the locker room. Walking out to the arena, I could tell I had crowd support and was very thankful for that.
One thing I always do when I get in the cage is look for my wife. It took me a little while to find her, but when I finally did, I could see she was worried. She’s told me countless times that she wants me to retire and, as I ponder the thought, I just know I’m not ready for that step yet.
The fight went like I thought it would. I though my wrestling and strength would play a big role. He was a little more elusive than I thought he would be, so standing I didn’t get to hit him as much as I was wanting to. On the ground he did a very good job of hand control and staying in decent position. I was surprised that all he wanted to do was try to tie me up on the ground. He really didn’t go for any submissions, he didn’t try to gain position, all he wanted to do was make the ref stand us up. There were some instances where the ref couldn’t stand us up because I seemed to be in a dominate position. It’s hard to stand a fighter up when he’s out of the guard.
When he knocked me down in the first round, I didn’t know what hit me. When I finally realized what had happened, I thought it was the same punch that knocked GSP down. My corner eventually told me that it was a head butt. His two minor submission attempts never even had me worried. When the fight was over, I was pretty confident I was going to get my hand raised. Some people have asked why I raised his hand at the end. Actually I didn’t, he raised mine. He also told me that, no matter what the decision was, he was done with the rivalry.
After the fight, I had things I wanted to say, but to be honest that head butt affected my whole fight and I couldn’t remember anything that I was going to say afterwards. Of course, I wanted to thank God for the win, thank my family and teammates for the support, and all the fans who showed up.
You know it’s funny, I keep track of little things, like who goes to the fights, who’s supportive afterwards and even who comes up to me after a loss and brings it up (in a negative way). With a hometown of 5000 people, a small farming community, I’ve had people, even friends, bet against me. They said it was because of the odds. Well it would have been a mistake this time.
Anyway, I definitely want to thank all of my forum members for coming out and my family and friends for all the support. It was nice to see everybody out there.
Usually, I have an after fight party at some big club that has loud music and wall-to-wall people. This time I wanted to do something different, we found a nice quiet bar thanks to Scott Luttrell (Marcus’ younger brother). As we hung out there, I shot a little pool and got to talk with all my friends that were there, without having to yell.
My webmaster was out there, so I got a lot of photos from the trip. Here are a few photos from the fight, we’ll post the rest on the forums:
Well, I’m out here in Vegas and I’ve got several guys with me: Robbie, Pena, Fiore, Matt Veach, and Damarques Johnson. I just got here today and I’m going to get my first workout in tonight. Physically I think I’m in great shape. Mentally, I’m very confident, so if I can have a good week then I think everything will be fine. Everybody knows I was up in Minnesota last week and here’s a short video clip of one of the workouts (There is some foul language in the song they chose for the video, but you won’t be missing anything by turning the sound off):
Just to let everybody know, these are the sponsors that are going to be on my banner and shorts:
Last week, Matt Pena and I went up and trained with Sean Sherk and several other fighters at Greg Nelson’s Minnesota Martial Arts Academy. We were there from Monday through Saturday afternoon. I had a great training session and also a good time. One thing about that gym is that they’ve got some tough guys in there. No wonder Sean has done as good as he has. The week before that, I was in Salt Lake City training with Jeremy Horn. So the last two weeks have been great.
This week I’ll stay at home training at the HIT Squad and try to spend some time with my family before I leave for the UFC on Tuesday. Getting this close to the fight it gets hectic, today I had to get on the phone with the Nevada Athletic Commission for my license. Yesterday I was on a conference call with Matt Serra, Rashad Evans and Lyoto Machida. They do it that way so any interviewer can call in, listen to all the questions that someone else has been asking and then ask their own if they want. I still have several interviews left to do, I just need to tell myself that it comes with the job as I’m not big on being interviewed. I also finally got my shorts lined out with my sponsors on it and my banner. That stuff sometimes gets a little hectic. Got my cornermen all lined out, so I think I’m ready to go for the fight.
I’ll try to check in one more time before I leave on Tuesday, so I will talk to you all again next week.
-matt
Well, sorry for the late blog, but as you all know I’ve been busy. I know most of you are wanting to know how my training is going, but to be honest I really don’t want to say much about it. After the fight, I’ll talk more about the training, but all I can say now is that it’s going very well. With all of my training, I don’t have a whole lot to say so I thought I’d bring some things up from the past. Here’s a few things that maybe some of you have never seen before:
XYIENCE “Country Breakfast” (2006)
That commercial even gave Nate the idea of me having my own breakfast cereal and here is the concept illustration that he made for that:
There were also these commercials that I did for XYIENCE:
XYIENCE “Cross-Sporting” (2006)
XYIENCE UFN Promo (2006)
When I’m travelling I always have my laptop with me and I’ve got tons of pictures on there and here are a few pictures that I look at frequently:
This is from the day Hanna was born:
Joey’s first day at the big school (kindergarten):
Some pictures of Hanna:
with Bobo (her grandfather)
This is one of my favorite pictures of Hanna
Joey, Hanna and Brandon in the big bed. (When Hanna wants to sleep with us, she always says “I want to sleep in the big bed”):
Audra and some of her friends at one of my fights (I can’t remember which one):
Me and Matt Pena:
Finally, I just like the message that this picture sends:
