a dozen days at the WSOP

Last month, I wrote about how motivated I was for this 2012 WSOP. I said I was confident, planning to play a lot, and play well. As we approach the two week mark, I've done all of these things, although the results have been a little bittersweet. I've played 8 events and cashed in 5 (which leads all players, and is a pace where I would surpass the all-time record of ten), but none of those cashes have been over five figures. The cashes combine for just $23429, and as of this writing I've played $13000 worth of events.



So things haven't exactly been spectacular. Still, the results inspire confidence. Despite the mincashes, I've managed to collect lots of chips every time I've cashed. (The exception was the PLO, which ended up being my highest cash and deepest finish.) Basically, I've just been having great luck on Day 1s and really bad luck on Day 2s.

The schedule has been pretty rough for me though. Each of those mincashes typically means about 15-18 hours spent at the Rio, plus commute time. That's a lot more hours than I've planned to book at the casino. I've only been to train jiujitsu a couple times, Muay Thai once, and other than that it's been very quick gym workouts at UNLV. Matt and I haven't even been able to set up our grappling mats in the house! On top of that my sleep has been pretty funky; I seem to only be able to consistently sleep five hours a night and in the afternoons and evenings I'm a bit of a zombie.

Nevertheless, I shouldn't complain. I'm up for the series so far, which ~90% of people aren't. It's been frustrating to have five cashes without a final table, but as I said I'm happy with how I've been playing, and this thing is not only one-third over.  And, of course, tonight is the $5000 limit hold'em. I suppose might have a shot at a deep run in that one.

the scary drive - Vancouver to Portland to Reno to Vegas

I've driven from Vancouver to Las Vegas seven times in my life, five of those for the WSOP. The most direct (and easy) route is the one pictured below, although a couple of times I've visited friends in southern California, so I've gone south down the I-5, then driven north to Vegas along the I-15.

This time, however, I was invited to stay with friends in Portland (and Portland is a great city I'm always happy to spend time in), so my trip looked a little different:

It's actually a fairly similar length, but the drive is much more treacherous.  I suppose I should have done my homework on this, but this drive takes me through a part of Cascade Mountains where the elevation is over 5000 feet and I was hit by sub-zero temperatures, snow, and winding, icy roads. Keep in mind that I drive a Porsche Boxster with racing tires, which is not exactly ideal. Most of the cars that were driving along with me were SUVs and light trucks, many of them with ski racks. It was very very scary. I spun the tires exactly once on an uphill, and it was at that point that I decided to go into old-lady driving mode and hope for the best. At one point I pulled over at a gas station to call a friend and have him check the weather and elevation going forward. Luckily at that point I had gotten the worst of it already and the rest of the drive was much less dangerous.

I wouldn't have dared taking a picture at the most dangerous parts, but once the traffic cleared up and the road got a little more manageable, I still managed to quickly get this one off.

After traversing the Cascades, one would think that things would be getting a lot less dangerous, but that wouldn't be the case. While driving through northeast California, I started getting some cold/flu symptoms. Now, driving isn't exactly a strenuous physical activity, but I was worried because I was getting very tired and sleepy. I pulled over a couple of times to recover and noticed I was getting the chills. A 10-hour driving day will give my body aches under the best of circumstances, but I was definitely feeling much more achy than usual. I could also tell my mental acuity and physical coordination was off: when I did actually arrive at my stop for the night in Reno, I noticed that I was fumbling objects when I went to pick them up, bumping into things, and just generally out of it.

I left Reno for Las Vegas early Saturday morning, but a little over an hour into my drive I pulled into a Walmart parking lot and slept in my car for an hour. Feeling sick, I didn't really feel like coffee, but the nap helped a bit and I continued onwards. I would end up stopping on nearly an hourly basis, including a second nap at a rest stop about four hours outside of Vegas. I now had a new problem that concerned me: my vision was getting blurry. I have laser-corrected and thus pretty much perfect vision, but my eyes were really fatigued. Signs that I would easily be able to read normally at 400 metres were unreadable to me at 100 metres. Especially when I shifted my eyes to look at something else (the rear-view mirror, for example) then went back to look at the road, my vision would become totally blurry.  I would often see cars off in the distance to find that there was in fact, no car; that what I was seeing was just a signpost or something. The road from Reno to Las Vegas is pretty much all monotonous desert and that didn't help things. It was very scary to be driving along at 75mph in such a compromised physical state. I think I will definitely look harder for a co-pilot on the trip back to Vancouver.

The good news is that I've finally made it safely to Las Vegas. Still running a slight fever, still not feeling great, but hopefully good enough to play the $1500 tomorrow. That first event is always awesome and it would suck to miss it.

Good luck, everyone!

mental game: Chael Sonnen on Joe Rogan podcast

I'm currently about one-third of the way on my drive from Vancouver to Las Vegas for the WSOP (no, I'm not writing this while driving). I'm travelling solo, so I'm listening to a lot of podcasts on the way. One gem I managed to come across was a long appearance by UFC middleweight contender Chael Sonnen on the Joe Rogan podcast. (For those who are familiar with Sonnen's pro-wrestling-type persona, he is not "in character" for the interview.)

The whole thing is pretty good, but I wanted to draw attention to one part in particular which begins at 1:18:42 where Sonnen talks a lot about the mental aspect of fighting. There's a lot of discussion about how fighters mentally break, the psychological hurdles Sonnen had to clear to get out of a slump in which he was basically just choking repeatedly (literally and figuratively). The two of them also talk a bit more specifically about fighting and what it's like to win or lose a big fight. It's a great listen for any sports fan.

Here is the link. The podcast is quite long and most of it is quite good, but the 20 minutes or so beginning at 1:18:42 is excellent.

"Seat Open" with me

I did an interview with PokerNews in Cebu. In the strange event you want to watch me talk about myself for 10 minutes, here it is:

Part 1:


Part 2:

What I believe (or rather, don't believe), human body edition

I'm impressed with what seems like increased interest in health and fitness in the poker community in the past couple of years. It seems that a lot of poker pros are realizing that the lifestyle they lead is not the healthiest, and are looking to better themselves. As kind of a health/fitness nut myself, I applaud this! However, it seems that there are still a ton of beliefs out there among the general populace over what to do and when/how to do it, and unfortunately a lot of these beliefs are way off.

The following is a nowhere-near-exhaustive list of things that most people believe but I believe are wrong. And to be truthful, I previously believed almost all of them at some point! Generally, the below statements are simply asserted and accepted as fact regardless of the evidence. In response, I will do the same and assert that the opposite of these statements is true without bothering with the pesky evidence. :) I am by no means an expert, but I read an awful lot. Sometimes I even read those boring medical studies that no one reads.

Anyhow, I have only included the most ubiquitous of beliefs. I have only included statements where you took a random sample of people in first-world, Westernized countries, I bet you would find that over 50% of people would agree with the following statements. But I now agree with none of them.

The List of Lies

• Saturated fats are bad for you
• Vegetable/canola oils and other polyunsaturated oils are better to cook with than butter or lard
• Low-fat yogurt is better for you than full-fat (you may replace "yogurt" with virtually every dairy product)
• For a healthier meal, trim the fat from your meat
• You should limit fat consumption to 20-30% of total calories
• Whole grains are good for you
• Brown rice is better for you than white rice
• Chicken is better for you than beef (or other red meats)
• Eating 5-6 small meals a day and snacking frequently is better than eating 2-3 large meals a day
• Skipping breakfast is bad for you
• Eating a big dinner at night is bad for you 
• To fight a cold/bolster your immune system, you should take lots of Vitamin C 
• You should eat lots of "antioxidant" foods 
• Wear lots of sunscreen to avoid harmful UV rays
• Get a good stretch before you work out
• If you want to lose weight, just do more cardio
• People who run should get shock-absorbing shoes to minimize damage
• You shouldn't work out on an empty stomach

I feel like I'm still missing a number of things, but I suppose these are the big ones. Of course, you should not just assume that I am right and popular opinion is wrong just because you're reading my blog. Do your own research. I'm just putting this out there as something to consider the next time you get some diet/exercise/lifestyle advice.

World Serious of Poker

The WSOP is just 20 days away. This excites me. This will be my seventh full year at the WSOP, but it still never fails to get my juices flowing.

By my count, I have played 113 WSOP (Las Vegas) events, collecting 17 cashes, 4 final tables, and zero bracelets. It's an unspectacular record, but a solid one, and the number at the bottom of my spreadsheet says that coming to the WSOP has been good for the bankroll.

But it's for far more than any financial reward that the WSOP is my favourite time of year. It's summer camp not just for the pros who play it, but also the recreational players, employees, media, and anyone connected to the poker world. It's the time of year where almost the entire poker world descends upon just one town; when you never eat dinner alone and you can pretty much always find someone to do whatever it is you want to do in that very instant. Whether it's to rail a final table, celebrate a bracelet, or commiserate over a bad beat, it's about the people.

But for me, the upcoming WSOP feels a little bit different. Within my closest circle of friends -- the guys who comprise what is often referred to as the "Math of Poker House" -- there is some feeling that the band is breaking up. At least one person has expressed the idea that this will be his last full WSOP. Another of our group is working on a new startup and will skip the main event (gasp!). Yet another will be foregoing the tournaments entirely, only dropping in on occasion to play cash games. And I find myself questioning my motivation to play poker for a living more and more these days. I've been in the game a long time now, and it's getting hard to compete with the young lions who are passionate about grinding the long hours and putting in their work. If you follow this blog at all, you know that the passion for the game that made me into a strong poker player has been diverted towards the goal of making myself the best mixed martial artist I can be.

But if 2012 truly is the last hurrah, then I'm determined to go out with a bang, not a whimper. I've still got some swagger when it comes to poker, and I still think I'm pretty darn good, even if the competition has gotten tough too.  I know I don't have much control over my results over the space of a couple dozen tournaments; no one does.  But I have full control over how well I play in them.  My goal is to say that from Event 2 to the time I bust out of the main event, I played well in every tournament and gave myself the best shot to win each one. Whether it's the last kick at the can or not, I think I owe myself that.

Cebu is Ce-bomb!

(You have no idea how long I spent internally debating what Cebu-related pun I would use for the title.)

Well, Cebu was fantastic. For years I had asked my friends who regularly play the Asian circuit what their favourite destination was, and usually the answer was Cebu. I wasn't able to make Season 2 or Season 3's editions, so I was excited to get to go this year.

Poker-wise, there was certainly nothing to write home about. I played two events and a total of 7 hours. I was comfortable and felt I played well in the main event, but I was a spaz and paid the price in the 6-max. I'm now 0-for-6 in 2012 in terms of tournament cashes.

But what a phenomenal destination. I actually spent only 3.5 days in Cebu and I definitely wish it had been more. I saved a bit of money by choosing to forego the Shangri-La Resort, where PokerStars put its qualifiers up, in favour of a 3-star room which ran me about $70 US (and where friends rented out the penthouse suite for only about $40 more). I have somewhat mixed feelings about this because while my hotel was good (and had massages on the 2nd floor for $3/hour), the Shangri-La is amazing. It's a gorgeous resort with lots of free activities and the service seems good as well. For those who have been to the PCA, I think the Shangri-La is everything that the Atlantis in the Bahamas should be, but isn't. The Atlantis has more attractions but the service is atrocious and everything is massively expensive. In Cebu, I found the service and atmosphere everywhere to be excellent.

At the resort, we did some free kayaking, I worked out a bit at the gym (also free), and rented some jetskis (not free, but not that expensive either). The jetskiing in particular was tremendously fun. I'd never ridden on one before, and was really surprised how fast they go. In fact, they go so fast and I wandered so far out that I lost track of where I was and had to ask some fisherman for directions back to the Shangri-La. All in all, I spent about 5 hours in the sun on Saturday and even got a little bit of sunburn for the first time in about 15 years.

And the food. Oh, the food. The Philippines is really not known as a culinary paradise, but man do these people know how to roast a pig. There was roast suckling pig at the Stars party and I had it on numerous occasions, but my favourite was a local place called Zubuchon, which served up this amazingness:

One blog writes: "Zubuchon’s pigs are not from commercial piggeries but are hand-picked from pigs raised in the backyards of certain individuals. They do not use MSG or commercial mixes for flavor. Instead, they use organic ingredients, including olive oil, local sea salt, home-grown lemongrass, peppers, green onions, and other herbs and spices."

Sign me the hell up.

Aside from the poker, beach and the food, there was also a street festival in progress that took place on the street directly in front of our hotel. I mean, really, really directly:

That's my hotel, and that's the party. Here's another shot:

Like Mardi Gras, without the nudity

It speaks to how busy I was eating that I didn't really investigate this street festival at all, but it seems like it would have been fun. I know it definitely made getting a cab a bit tricky.

All in all, Cebu was a great trip. It's not somewhere I'd want to spend a really long period of time, but it's such a great short getaway from Hong Kong and I'd love to do it again. If I were taking someone I were trying to impress, I'd consider staying at the Shangri-La and laze around the beach, but staying at any of the hotels nearby which are a third of the price (not just rooms, but food/massage/activities) and a 10-minute cab ride away are also viable options. Can't wait to go back!

Copa de Hong Kong 2012

Suffered a tough loss in a BJJ tournament yesterday. The Copa de Hong Kong is HK's largest BJJ tournament. It's single-elimination tournament format. There were 10 guys in my division (there are byes) so I would have had to fight three times to get the gold medal. I was very ready for this.

I have trained very little in the gi in the last twelve months, since that is when I started training for MMA. The gi game is very different from the no-gi one; it's a game of tight control and grip fighting whereas no-gi is more fast and explosive (and slippery, due to the sweat). So I wasn't expecting to be technically as sharp as I could be, but I felt that I would have superior conditioning to my opponents and that I would be poised to make a deep run and gut it out when the going got tough.

At the moment I submit to the armbar, I am up 4-2. (Here is an explanation of how the points work.) By my stopwatch, there is 30 seconds remaining in the fight at this point. As you can see, I was totally disgusted by making the fatal error that led to the triangle, and subsequently the armbar. Not since Bret Hart got put in the Sharpshooter have I been so upset about the villain beating the hero with his own finishing move. That's how upset I was.

It was disappointing. I really felt great and I'd barely broken a sweat in the match, and it was all over. I would have loved to fight three times, but I was beaten by the better man. I received some small measure of consolation when my opponent -- exhausted as he was after squeezing his ass off for over 90 seconds trying to finish me -- absolutely smashed his semifinal opponent, sweeping him to the back and choking him with a hellacious bow-and-arrow choke.

So that was disappointing, but back on the MMA track for now. Gi-based BJJ is fun but much like boxing, kickboxing and wrestling, it is only part of the game for the MMA fighter. Much like it'd be tough to box against people who only box, it will continue to be hard for me to play jiujitsu against people who only do jiujitsu. And so the healthiest approach is to worry less about wins and losses and worry more about the continual process of self-improvement.

(But losing still sucks.)

Running good, mountainously

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with running. Mostly it falls to the "hate" side. Running is not something I have ever really enjoyed, although running in nature certainly is more appealing to me than any other kind of gym-based long slow cardio activity. Compared to the fun I get to have in the gym sparring, grappling, hitting pads or doing drills, running to me has always been so boring.

So it struck me as rather odd that when my training partner Diego posted on Facebook that he was doing this 7.5 km race up Victoria Peak in Hong Kong that I felt compelled to sign up for it. Not only do I run less than once-per-week on average (probably 30 times in the last year), when I do run, it's always on flat land. On top of that, I have also barely done any running in the last 3 months due to a minor injury in my foot that bothers me quite a bit when I run (or sometimes, walk).

So why the hell did I decide to do an uphill race?

I guess the main reason is that as little as I like it, I am trying to incorporate running a bit more into my life. Joel Jamieson, an MMA strength and conditioning trainer whose book I really enjoyed, has written that "roadwork" is an incredibly under-appreciated part of MMA conditioning. He notes that while both Western boxers and Thai boxers have always incorporated roadwork in their fights, MMA trainers too often feel that only powerful, anaerobic exercise has any place in MMA conditioning. Jamieson argues that there are relevant, MMA-applicable adaptations that long, slow, 130-160 beat-per-minute cardio training enable that anaerobic interval training just won't re-create. And it makes some sense: professional MMA fights are 15 minutes long, and the anaerobic system lasts only a couple minutes.

In short, running is good for me as a combat athlete, so I should learn to like it.

The other reason is that the run is uphill. But I just finished saying that I basically never run uphill. This is true, but one of my favourite activities back in Vancouver is doing the Grouse Grind, a killer trail with a 31% average incline. I can't walk the Grind and everyone I've ever taken up to the Grind thinks they can run up it, but they never can. I think I'm a way below-average runner on flat land, but I thought maybe I'm better adapted to the demands of uphill. I also noticed walking around Hong Kong (which is quite steep in general) that when walking uphill, my foot injury doesn't bother me at all. So when I did a trial run up Victoria Peak and noticed that my foot also didn't hurt very much running uphill, I thought hey, what the hell.

The course

(Click to enlarge.)

After the race, I went into Google Earth and plotted the path, which is what you see above. As you can see, it's up and down, up and down for the first 6 km, and then gets crazy steep at the end.

My game plan for the race was to pace myself slowly. Basically I didn't want to kill myself in the flats and die on the uphills, because that would be pretty embarrassing in addition to killing my time. So I paced myself really slowly for the first four kilometers. As it turns out, I did a good job of it. Way too good.

Results

My 3km time came in at 25:22. My 3km-7.5km time came in at 23:18! So basically, I ran the last 4.5km, which were super-steep, faster than I ran the first 3km which was almost totally flat!

And it was obvious, too. Early on, tons of people were passing me, and I had no problem with it because I was "following the game plan". But after 5km, almost no one was passing me, and I was starting to pass someone new every few seconds. By the 6km mark, absolutely no one was passing me and I was blowing by people by the dozens. I crossed the finish line with way too much gas in the tank.

For comparison, I took the splits from the top ten finishers and those guys did the front 3km on average 1:11 faster than the back 4.5km. I then took the ten guys who finished immediately before and after me, and on average they were 1:58 faster in the front than in the back. But my dumb ass did the front half 2:04 slower than the back half! What a major fail!

For overall results, I finished 351^st out of 523 men and 110^th out of 165 for males born 1973-1982. Decidedly below average, although not as far below average as I would have predicted going in. I feel like with a some better pacing, I probably could have knocked off 4-5 minutes and gotten myself to about the middle of the pack.

But hey, I'm not a competitive racer and this was not supposed to be an end in itself, but rather a means to an end. And to that end it did cultivate a desire for me to do more uphill roadwork. I have to say, I actually found it kind of fun! I definitely enjoy uphill running a lot more than flat running (especially since flat running is hurting my foot at the moment), and I would be surprised if today were to be my last run up Victoria Peak this week.

So, lame pacing and unimpressive time notwithstanding, mission accomplished!

Whee! Fight pictures from Legend 8!

I just got a big batch of fight pictures from Legend. I love the way they look! I'd love to post them all but in the interest of not crashing everyone's browser, here are a few of my favourites. I think the ones I really like are the ones of me getting blasted in the face. I look at myself getting punched and it looks like a parody of someone getting punched.

I'm planning to have one of the pictures printed for my home; let me know in the comments which one you would choose if you were me.

Anyway, enjoy! All pictures are courtesy of Legend Fighting Championship and are posted here with their permission.

Blog stats that make you go hmm...

My visitors by country, as tracked by blogger:

United States 16,965

Canada 5,798

United Kingdom 1,708

Australia 891

Hong Kong 693

Ukraine 519

China 492

Germany 472

Netherlands 387

France 262

No surprises in 1 through 5. Two of the countries are the top two in native English-speaking population and the other three are English-speaking countries to which I have ties. But then Ukraine at #6? What explains this? And China at #7 seems weird too, since I would have guess China would be much lower since the Great Firewall would filter out Blogger pages. I suppose those are all proxy visitors?

Ukrainian and Chinese visitors, speak up!

Legend FC 8 fight recap

It wasn't easy getting into the proper mental state for my fight on Friday night. For some reason, this fight felt a little different than either of my previous two. It wasn't that it was pro versus amateur. That difference was fairly minor and somewhat arbitrary. While in many jurisdictions amateur shows have very restrictive rules, the two amateur fights I had participated in were little different than typical pro fights. The only differences were regarding elbows and knees to the head, twisting leglocks, 4-ounce (versus 6-ounce) gloves and 5-minute (versus 3-minute) rounds.

No, what felt different wasn't the ruleset, the level of competition, the size of the stage, or the potential audience. It was all internal. As late as Monday night, I didn't quite feel "right". It's hard to put a finger on any one thing that caused this, as I believe it was a huge number of things coming together. The first was that I knew I'd be facing my most dangerous opponent so far. This was a guy with size and power who very nearly KO'd his last opponent in devastating fashion. What if I wasn't going to be able to drag him to the ground? It seemed possible that if that were the case, I'd be setting myself for an embarrassing and painful beatdown.

Still, that was only a small piece of the puzzle. Strangely, I felt unprepared. This shouldn't be the case, since I just fought in Korea and I had been training regularly up to that fight. But taking the fight on two weeks' notice led to some unforeseen circumstances. I had friends in town staying at my apartment, visiting Hong Kong for the first time, and felt compelled to show them around and take them to my favourite restaurants and tourist spots. I was eating more in restaurants and had very little time to devote to mental preparation. I was happy to have them there for support but it felt very different than in the leadup to my fight in September where I was able to prepare for the fight nearly every waking hour.

I felt like I wasn't physically ready either. My two most regular sparring partners, Irshaad and Rodrigo, both fought in China just six days before me. In the first few days after the fight announcement, they were tapering their training. Both would go on to fight tough 3-round decisions and obviously had to take the week off afterwards. Thankfully, I had teammates at the gym offer to help me get together at the last minute. Diego held pads and put me through a hard training session on Saturday, but that would be in fact the only hard training session I had for this abbreviated training camp. I figured any hard sparring after that day was more likely to result in injury rather than improvement anyway. For the rest of the week I simply practiced takedowns for an hour a day with Pravin, a jiujitsu guy at my gym with a similar build to my opponent.

Negative thoughts continued to invade my head, but I told almost no one about them. What if the restaurant food made me sluggish? What if not getting enough sleep was affecting me? What if I ran out of gas and looked awful? What if I was knocked out in front of not just all my friends in the building, but the many thousands of poker players I knew worldwide who would be watching on YouTube? I think what scared me far more than being knocked out was embarrassing myself by running out of gas. Much of my game is based around raw tenacity and dogged determination, but that kind of style requires a gas tank I wasn't sure I had for this fight.

Those thoughts continued to plague me as late as Monday night. On Tuesday, I resolved to do some meditation, positive thinking, and positive visualization outdoors. It was a warm, sunny day in Hong Kong and it worked better than I could have hoped. Just 30 minutes of deep breathing and positive thinking in the park made me feel tremendously better. For the rest of the week I was in a positive mental space, all the way up until a couple hours before the fight. If you've never done this type of intense visualization before, I strongly recommend it.

Fight Day

I was told to arrive at the venue at 3 PM. I wasn't sure why, really, and I'm still not, because almost all the time between 3-6 PM was spent by all the fighters just lying down backstage listening to music and trying to mentally prepare. I got to spend about 15 minutes feeling out the ring, but for the most part, those three hours were spent with mood alternating between tremendous boredom and increasing anxiety.

There are a number of advantages to fighting at home. Everything is familiar and easy. But there was one disadvantage, and that is that unlike for all the other fighters, my cornermen were not travelling with me. Obviously the guys from Australia, New Zealand, Korea, China and so forth were travelling with their fighters, so there would be no logistical issues. But the fight was on a Friday, and my three cornermen, who all live in Hong Kong, had work obligations in the city (which is a significant train ride from the Asia World Expo). I wasn't really sure when they were going to show up exactly, only that it wasn't likely to be before 6:00. With the fight starting at 7:00 sharp, I would have felt a lot more comfortable if my hands were already wrapped up by 6:00. In retrospect, them getting there at about 6:10 ended up being fine, but the time between 5:00-6:10 felt like an eternity and I was just a big ball of anxiety. I definitely don't want to be by myself for three hours in a room full of unfamiliar guys again just before a fight. Nevertheless I am tremendously grateful to my cornermen that they were available at all on such short notice and when they did show up they were a very calming influence.

But that anxiety started to bring up my other fears from earlier in the week. I got wrapped up by Jordan and started pummeling and hitting pads to get warm. I noticed that instead of getting warm and breaking a sweat, I was starting to breathe hard through my mouth, and that got me all nervous about my gas tank again. It was in my head again: what if I'm just not physically ready for this? I shoved that thought aside.

About 15 minutes before the fight, Douglas got me doing some dynamic stretching, which made me feel better. Diego sat me down for a talk. It wasn't a pep talk; he simply looked me in the eyes and reminded me that I'm ready for this, that I have a game plan, and that the three of them will be there with me. It was definitely what I needed to hear and while I can't say it totally quieted the nerves, it soothed them some. Just as he finished, the stage manager called me out to the waiting area.

Lights, cameras...action?

I was told I would enter through one entrance, and my three cornermen down another. I was told to watch the hype video and be right to go out "as soon as the lights turned on". I flashed back to being backstage at Battlefield 12 in Vancouver, where three of my Universal MMA teammates fought on the card. Coach Paulie had stressed to my teammates fighting on that night, "you go out when you are ready"; in other words, don't let them rush you down the entrance. But here at Legend, as soon as the light turned on the stage manager frantically screamed, "go! go!"

I paused, preferring to take a moment to collect myself. She screamed at me again, so I started walking out slowly. "Go faster!" she shrieked, and I was getting annoyed at her. Once I passed the curtain I couldn't hear her any more.

"You're The Best" was, of course, playing. I have so many positive associations with this song. Any time I feel like I don't want to go to the gym, I can put it on. If I'm near the end of a hard cardio session, I can put it on. It always puts the skip in my step, and it started with that first fight back in Battlefield. The song just makes me happy.

But then something terrifying happened. I didn't feel it. The song didn't rush through my body and get me jumping. I had to tell myself to get happy, to have fun, to get loose. If you look carefully at the ring entrance, I am pumping my fists and moving my body around as if I'm having fun, but there's no smile on my face. Back in September, I was grinning ear to ear and ready to go. This time out, the strongest emotion was not fun, but nervousness.

Upon entering the ring though, I heard the cheers and knew my friends were there. I instinctively sprinted towards the turnbuckle, intending to jump up onto it, but I gathered so much momentum I lost control and sprang off of it. When my feet landed back on the canvas, I located my friends in the front row -- right behind my corner, in fact -- and immediately I felt better. Now I was loose. Now it was fun again.

Diego called me in for a few last words. He reminded me not to rush anything, that I can stand with this guy, and not to hurry into takedowns.

Now it was Alex's turn to walk out. He got in the ring and nodded at me, and I nodded back. He side-straddle circled the ring, and came just a couple feet from my corner, facing me, in an attempt to intimidate, or at least see if I was intimidated. I wasn't intimidated, but I did notice he looked extremely confident. I knew I'd be in for a fight.

As the fight began, I reminded myself to smile. But then something happened; my forced smile turned into a real smile. It was a smile of relief. I knew that all the doubts didn't matter now. For the next 15 minutes or less, all I have to do is fight.

Let's get it on!

If you're reading this far, I assume you've seen the fight, so I'll try to keep the play-by-play to a minimum. We spent the first 20 seconds of the round on the feet. I honestly had no plans to take him down that quickly. Despite his experience advantage, I was plenty confident in my hands and I planned to heed Diego's words. I wanted to make sure that I didn't shoot from way outside and that when I did shoot for takedowns that it would be set up with my strikes. But the takedown I scored 20 seconds into the fight wasn't planned at all. It really just happened. And I feel great about that, because instead of it being a scripted thing, it just came naturally as soon as my mind's eye saw the opening. This is what it feels like to be truly trained in something. I didn't think, I simply did. That opening takedown was perhaps the single best thing I did in the entire fight. The opening was there for an instant, and I took it.

The rest of the round is pretty straightforward. I was clearly the better grappler and I positionally dominated him. He does land some hard strikes but I'm pretty much allowing most of them to happen because I know I'm going to be able to turn his aggression against him. Two good examples of this: at 2:25 when it is obvious I'm looking for an armbar, and about 1:20 after my missed guillotine. In both cases he continues to try to throw hard strikes at me instead of defending my attack. I believe in my chin and have no problem trading a few hard shots for an improved position.

Round 1 ends and I'm tired, but feeling pretty good. I make sure I am first to get up to go to my corner. Only one cornerman is allowed in the ring and that's Jordan who gives me some water and wipes me down. Diego tells me I'm doing well and to keep doing what I'm doing. The second I hear "seconds out" I spring to my feet, hoping to get the psychological advantage.

Alex comes way out to the centre of the ring well before the ref restarts the round. I'm not sure if this is gamesmanship or if he really thought the fight was on already, but it was clear he was demonstrating that he was pissed off at how the first round went and that he is going to try to kick my ass now. The ref sends him back to his corner and we begin.

My lungs and my legs feel fine, but for some reason my arms are very tense and feel gorged with blood. They're also obviously very slow, as I get tagged twice, hard. The last left hand sparks a flash of light in my head and you can see me stagger a bit. This time the quick takedown is planned, as the thought, "shit, let's not take too many more of those" is firmly implanted in my mind. The takedown comes much easier than I thought. On replay I can see that is because he was throwing a kick at the same time as my shot; I would wake up on Saturday morning with quite the sore shoulder as the result of that kick.

Shooting a takedown right into his kick. Good thing I had my head up!

Once again, passing his guard and improving to a dominant position is almost too easy, although I am once again bridged from mount. Not long after he bridges me into my guard, you can hear on the video his corner yelling at him in Cantonese to get out of my guard. For whatever reason, Alex chooses to ignore this advice. I had a contingency for him fleeing my guard, but still, he probably should have tried. You can argue that this is the reason he lost (although I would dispute this, as I'm confident I would have gotten him down again soon enough). By the way, if you're curious about what his hardest strike of the fight was, it's not the one on the feet early in Round 2, it's the one with 3:44 left in the round (pictured below). That one was nasty. But you can see at 3:32 I learn quickly from my mistake and never allow him to get posture like that again.

What not to do from open guard in an MMA fight. Take note, kids.

The end comes shortly after. I was able to catch the triangle off of a setup from butterfly that I've been experimenting quite a bit with in sparring sessions, and I'm very happy that I was able to hit it so smoothly in a real fight.

I'm almost certain I could have finished with the triangle if I stuck with it. I think he was just a couple seconds from either tapping or going to sleep. But when you're in a fight, it's so much easier to simply do exactly what the corner says, so I heard Diego yell, "take the armbar", I just did it. That's the value of a strong corner. I can see on the replay that the angle is perfect to transition to the armbar.

By the time I got over to the corner and hugged Jordan, I was about ready to collapse. I was watching Bellator last night where Nate Quarry was a guest commentator, and told a story where he said to his cornerman, "pretend like you're still hugging me because otherwise I'm going to fall over". I felt like that. I felt far more exhausted in that moment than at any moment during the fight. I feel like I would have had no problem going the full 15 minutes, but it was as if the second Alex tapped and the ref pulled me off, every bit of energy my body had stored just rushed out of me.

Denouement

I got back to the dressing room, and didn't hang out there long. What I wanted the most in that moment after thanking my corner was to get out to all the people who had bought tickets to support me, and nothing mattered more than that. I did a quick interview with a crew that is doing a documentary about Legend, got my wraps and tape cut off, and head outside to enjoy the rest of the show. Most of the rest of the night is a blur. It was wonderful being congratulated both in the audience and by hundreds of people on Twitter and Facebook watching from all over the world, even the parts of the world where the fight began at 4 AM. I didn't even end up eating dinner or going to the afterparty. Carrying around a 30lb bag of gear all over central Hong Kong was a complete non-starter, so I simply headed home and savoured the win.

Acknowledgements

Once again, my thanks goes out to my coaches, teammates and training partners, where ever on the globe they might be. In particular, I want to thank Diego, Jordan and Douglas for their help. But I truly believe that every person I have ever sparred, rolled, or drilled with, everyone I have ever competed against, and everyone who has ever offered a kind word or a pat on the back is a part of whatever modest success I might have, and I am grateful to each and every one of those people for their contribution.