Boomer Tale: UFC 123

[Boomer]

Originally Posted by flo

Matt has a good friend in you, Boomer. You rock.

And I think you're right about what you wrote in the last 2 paragraphs; it made me feel better about yesterday and put it into perspective.

Anyway, thanks for the Boomer Tale, it's EPIC!!

well...except for the sushi parts...

and who is that in the first pic between you and philips?

That is Danny's buddy flo.

[Boomer]

Originally Posted by Llamafighter

Technically Matt paid your bet, though right?

Wish he would pay mine ....

[Llamafighter]

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's pic

[Llamafighter]

Originally Posted by Boomer

Wish he would pay mine ....

Hahaha!

[TENNESSEAN]

great tale boomtown!!!
the memories thing is true. when i think about the time at 98, what first comes to mind is a great karaoke performance of a horrible song and a llama staggering around with one lens in his sunglasses

[Llamafighter]

Originally Posted by TENNESSEAN

great tale boomtown!!!
the memories thing is true. when i think about the time at 98, what first comes to mind is a great karaoke performance of a horrible song and a llama staggering around with one lens in his sunglasses

staggering? 1 lens? you were only there for 10 minutes?? your memory is faulty.

[NateR]

I was going to post these pictures in a separate thread, but I don't want to take too much attention away from Boomer's tale. So this seems like as good a place as any to put these.

Some pics from the weigh-ins:

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Dennis Hallman's Superman underwear. Or where you all trying to purge it from your memories? Well, now you can't.

Brian Foster:


BJ:


Matt:


Matt seemed to be asking Dana something just before he stepped on the scale, but I have no idea what it was:










Lyoto:

Rampage:




Matt and Brandon at the after party:

Mark and Brandon:

Jens, Brandon and Boomer (sorry about the eyes closed thing Boom):

philips4, Jens and Chuck:

The forums group photo from the after party. Unfortunately, there were so many people snapping photos, that I don't have on with everyone looking in the same direction, (obviously I wasn't the one taking the picture), so I'll just post all the ones that were on my camera:



As everyone was heading out, I snapped this shot of Mark and Emily leaving the after party. It's just too bad that my camera flash can't reach very far:


My quick rundown of the weekend: I got a ride out to the event with Danny, his friend John and three of his four sons (I actually felt a little bad that I might have been taking up a seat and preventing Danny from taking all of his kids to the event). We left at about 4:15 AM on Friday.

The trip was pretty uneventful except for the first 20 minutes or so. We were just outside Coffeen, and I think I was leaning forward to move my camera bag so I would have more room for my feet, when I felt the truck swerve, and heard, "Oh s***!" **CRACK!** THUMP!** THUMP** thump ** thump...

Turns out a deer had wandering onto the highway and John tried to swerve to miss it but ended up smacking the deer right in the side of its face with his right headlight... going at 70mph.... The deer spun around and it's butt smashed into my door (I was sitting in the second row on the passenger side) and then it disappeared from sight. We stopped and surveyed the damage and scanned around to see if the deer was still on the road, but couldn't see it. Pretty sure it died, since Danny's son, Shane, reported seeing an explosion of red as the truck hit the deer's face. If it's not dead then there's a doe wandering around central Illinois with a lightbulb embedded in its brain cavity (maybe now we know the true origin of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). The damage wasn't too severe, the headlights and blinkers still worked (amazingly) and my door still opened, so we trucked on.

Anyways we got to Detroit just in time for the weigh ins and I caught up with Llamafighter, Chuck and VCURamFan at the arena. Llama introduced me to his friend, Brian, and after a few minutes Boomer showed up to give us our armbands for the after party. We then headed off to the restaurant for the meal. I originally sat with Llama, Brian, Chuck and Ben, but Boomer came up to me and told me that he had reserved a place for me at the fighter's table. I hesitated because I didn't want Llama and the guys to feel like I was ditching them, but then I thought, "free food" and my mind was made up.

The dinner was great and I ate way too much. Most everyone ordered desert (I ordered the Italian chocolate cake) and I guess someone ordered an apple crisp dessert and they didn't like it, because I heard Matt saying "Give it to Nate," and suddenly I had two desserts. For the record, the apple crisp wasn't that bad, but it was nowhere near as good as my chocolate cake. I guess Robbie agreed because I was too full to eat the entire cake and he asked, "Are you done with that?" When I said yes, he took a fork and sliced off about half of the remaining cake and ate it all in one bite.

Llama, Brian and I went back to the hotel and got our room situated, then headed downstairs to the bar to wait for Mark to get in. Mark and Emily, along with two other couples that they traveled to Detroit with, got there pretty late and we all hung around the bar for a while. It was probably around 1 or 2 AM before everyone finally went up to their rooms. I had been up since 3 AM on Friday, so I was exhausted.

We slept in until about 10:30 on Saturday, then Llama, Brian and I went down to get some breakfast. We mostly just hung around the hotel room, watched some movies and went to a couple of stores. One of the ways that I like to keep myself from getting too nervous on the days that Matt fights is to take my mind off of things by going shopping for Star Wars toys. So we checked out a Target and TRU, then headed back to the hotel and met up with Mark, Chuck and Ben at the bar. Everyone started filtering in and, since we were all going to the fight with different groups, we all filtered back out.

We were originally supposed to meet up at the place where the after party was going to be, but there were no parking spaces, so Llama, Brian and I ended up grabbing something to eat at McDonalds and then we headed to the arena.

I got to my seats, I was sitting next to Danny's kids, who were on my right. After a few minutes, Brandon, Matt's son, and his mom took their seats on my right. It was pretty cool because I think it was Brandon's first live UFC event and he was pretty excited. Unfortunately, Matt's loss was even more heartbreaking because they kept replaying the end of the fight on the big screens and I turned to see that Brandon was crying and his mom was trying to shield his face from seeing the replays. To make it worse, we could hear people behind us cheering Matt's knock out. That all weighed pretty heavily on me, but I think once Brandon saw that his dad was alright at the after party, everything was fine again.

Speaking of the after party, it was a great time. Of course, it would have been better if the fight had turned out differently, but Matt was in really good spirits. I didn't really know what to say to Matt about the fight, I'm pretty bad in those situations. I've never competed in sports or ever been the competitive type, so I had no words of encouragement or consolation to give that wouldn't sound forced. I can't even come up with the words to tell Matt how much I love him and how much he means to me and how I'm always going to be there for him no matter what happens. I ended up just sitting quietly at the end of Matt's table feeling pretty useless; but I'm confident that Matt knows where my loyalties are without me having to say a word.

Overall, this weekend was definitely an emotional roller coaster ride with a few lows mostly overshadowed by some really awesome highs. It was great to get to spend so much time with Llamafighter. We had met in Vegas, when Matt fought Serra, and instantly our personalities clicked, so I was glad to get a chance to hang out with him again. Looking forward to the next time we all get together.

[adamt]

what was matt saying before he stepped on the scale?


who is that black dude that greets the fighters when they get on stage?

and

nate....did you have to get some kind of pass to get that close? how's that work exactly?

[NateR]

Originally Posted by adamt

nate....did you have to get some kind of pass to get that close? how's that work exactly?

No pass, just a $300 telephoto lens. It didn't hurt that Llama was a Fight Club member and had saved me a seat in the front row either.

[Llamafighter]

Wow, Nate!
You have a real gift for writing, buddy. It was a real pleasure spending the weekend hanging out with ya. Bryan commented on the way to the airport that he also had a great time with a North Cackalackeean
We made a lot of good memories this weekend and I'm sure we'll be hanging out again soon and we'll pick up where we left off.