Spent the weekend in Baltimore with a few friends visiting my friend's sister. Good times! Fells Point out in Baltimore is a very nice area. It reminds me of Olde City in Philly, but right on the waterfront with bigger two-way streets and cleaner. Saw an awesome funk/jazz trio at the Cat's Eye Pub called Carl Filipiak and the Jimi Jazz Trio. It's been a while since I've seen a good jam trio and the drummer was phenomenal. I picked up the CD and was a little bummed to find that the drummer who played with them that night isn't on the record, but instead half the tracks were played by Dennis Chambers! If there are any drummers out there, that man needs no introduction, but suffice it to say that he's one of the best funk drummers ever, and that's not an exaggeration. I used to study books based off of him when I was still taking private lessons.

So anyway, I missed watching UFC 104 live since I was out of town, so I stayed away from all headlines and downloaded the fight overnight last night. Before I went to work this morning I watched the two headlining fights, content that I would learn the results of all of the other fights before actually seeing them. I just wanted to be surprised by the two biggest fights of the night. And surprised I was, at one of them, at least.

ALERT: UFC 104 SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT

First there was Cain Velasquez and Ben Rothwell and it went exactly as I had predicted (if you go by my predicitions in the contest at the MMA Union). I saw Velasquez winning by TKO in the 2nd round, and that's what happened, but it was a much more overwhelming win than I thought it would be. I'm shocked Rothwell made it through the first round. Apparently, Velasquez wasn't kidding when he said he was displeased with his decision win against Cheik Kongo and wanted to work more on finishing fights... I don't think he went for any subs but every time he had Rothwell down, he was teeing off on him. I mean it was nasty. Velasquez is looking like the real deal right now. His next fight should be for #1 contendership IMO.

Then there was the Machida vs. Rua matchup. Machida was the easy pick as no one has been able to solve him. But watching this fight, it looks like the old Shogun is back. He's the first guy to shake up Machida at all. It went all 5 rounds, and by the end of the fight, Machida looked like he was gassing a bit, and he was plodding on his legs after taking some brutal kicks and knees in the clinch throughout the fight. It was a close fight and Rua clearly won the last two rounds, but the fight was scored as if Machida won the first three, which I definitely didn't see. It looked like Rua should have won the title but they gave it to Machida via unanimous decision. Coming on to the forums and reading articles this morning, I wasn't the only one who thought Rua was robbed. In fact, Dana White came right out and said he thought Rua won, and an immediate rematch looks likely. Problem is, now Machida knows what Rua is going to be coming with, so the rematch is gonna be tough to call. I know that I'll be rooting for Rua, though. It would be pretty fantastic if Rua won the rematch, leading to a potential rubber match in the future. That would be huge.

I know the results of the rest of the fight but I'm gonna watch it anyway when I get home on Tuesday. And I won my title matchup in the UFC 104 Predictions Contest at the MMA union! So I get the belt! I'll show it off here once the image is done. Woo

So I blogged about a week and a half ago about my first wrestling session and how it resulted in me having a lot of trouble walking for about 3 days. Well, my legs still don't feel 100% which is pretty crazy, and kind of solidifies that it's the hardest I've made them work at any point in my life, regardless of how much running or lifting I may have done before. I guess I didn't put enough time into squats! But anyway, I've decided that I'm not ready to completely destroy myself just yet, and talking to a few other guys at that particular MMA gym, wrestling was the wrong thing to start with. Ha, wish I knew that beforehand. My buddy who's about to test for his Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu blue belt doesn't even go to the wrestling session So I'm gonna start going exclusively to BJJ and boxing sessions until my cardio and base strength are in a better place, and then work in the Muay Thai and wrestling *sessions after a while. On that note, my first BJJ session is today, so if I don't feel quite as destroyed as I did after the first day of wrestling, I'll be going to my second BJJ session on Wednesday, and do the Monday-Wednesday thing for a while.

On the gaming front, last week was a busy one and I was away for the weekend, so I probably squeezed in about a total of 2 hours or so on Dead Space over the past week. Now I'm in chapter 7 of 12, so I'm honestly hoping to finish it this week. We'll see. After that, I'll probably move on to finishing Brutal Legend.

Well, back to work.