Ok, so I know I have about disappeared off the map for a little over a week. I have spent the first couple weeks of the year trying to take care of some personal things and come to some resolutions about what I want to do with my year. To me, this is going to be a HUGE year for Combatlifestyle.com and I think that you will see some new changes, exciting partnerships, and what we do best, fantastic behind the scenes content of your favorite fighters in their real lives! That being said, I apologize for the lack of new content over the last week and a half. Hopefully I can make up for it with exciting updates each day from Ireland. I am going to try and keep up as best I can but as the week wears on, things get busier and crazier!! That being said, here goes..
Ireland... I had never been, and I was excited at the opportunity to go, but I didn't know that I could afford the trip out across the pond. I kept checking flights and due to the way the economy is, they stayed right under 700 bucks until I purchased mine 9 days before my trip. The total was $638.00 which is an awesome deal; too good to pass up for an opportunity to go to Europe for UFC 93. I knew that ramen would be in my future for a while as a result but I knew that the adventures that I was about to embark upon would be well worth it.
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
In the last few weeks, I have gotten used to taking full nights to sleep. I have run around quite a bit less so got a full night's sleep before heading to the airport to check in two hours early. I had a lot of last minute running around to do and somehow timed it perfectly; I pulled up at 9:55 for my 11:55am flight. Everything went smoothly and I passed out on the 4.5 hour flight to Philly where I had a 2 hour layover. I ran into Yahoo MMA and boxing writer, Kevin Iole there. He was on the same plane as me (in first class- his dividend mile status gave him nice upgrades!) for the final leg of the trip to Dublin. The flight was supposed to be a 6 hour flight and arrive at 9am, but somehow the tail wind was in our favor and although the ride was quite bumpy, we made it in at 8am instead. I couldn't sleep on the second part of the trip so I watched a movie, and got some work done on my laptop.
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
We made our way through customs and waited for our bags at baggage claim. Other than my bag taking FOREVER to arrive, everything went smoothly and we were in a cab on our way to the hotel before our plane was originally supposed to touch down. Our cab drived was quite the tour guide pointing out sites and suggesting things that we should do while we were in Dublin. The weather was quite dreary; quite wet out, but not fully raining and VERY cold. I think it was about 35 degrees all day long.
The hotel was located on the Quays, pronounced, "keys". There is a river that separates the north side of town from the south; the hotel was on the North side in the financial district. Apparently there wasn't much to see or do and we would have to walk or cab (everything was pretty close) across the river for the more interesting sites. Kevin checked in and headed to his room immmediately; my room wasn't ready yet so I sat down in the lobby to take advantage of the free internet that the hotel boasted. Not many of the fighters were up at this time, but I greeted a ton of the UFC employees as they walked back and forth from the UFC office on various errands they had to attend to.
By 11, I was sitting in the hotel bar conversing with Duke Roufus, his buddy Jared, Kim Goldberg, and Marcus Davis. A number of fighters and their teams were up and moving around by this time. I finally was able to check into my room and quickly cleaned up so that I could go siteseeing. We were dying of hunger so Duke, Jared, Pat Barry and I went in search of some Thai food. We were told about thai spice that was a few blocks away and between directions on streets that rarely had street signs, and google maps on my phone (yes, it worked really well!!), we made it to the tiniest restaraunt located on the south side of the river for a yummy meal.
Duke and I wanted to go hat shopping so I google mapped a hat shop and found one that was a small cab ride away. We all jumped out halfway there to adventure around a large shopping area instead of going to the Mad Hatter that I had located. After asking for help from a police man, we made our way around an outdoor mall to a number of men's stores that sold hand made derbys, or Paddy Hats as they call them in Ireland. We had quite a lot of fun trying on different hats before choosing one to purchase.
That task under our belts, as well as some souvenir shopping, we went in search of a traditional Irish pub so the guys could grab a pint. We managed to find Dawson's lounge, the smallest pub in Dublin. How did we know? It said so on the door! It was a small red door on Dawson Street right near Trinity College. The narrow stairs took us down into a room as big as you see in the photos here. The door to the bathroom was so short that I almost had to duck to go through it; the ceilings once inside were so low that there was a cushion on the ceiling above the toilet to keep you from hitting your head once you stood up from your business. Jared grabbed a pint of Carlsberg, Pat a Bailey's Irish cream, Duke a hot tea and I went thirsty as I don't drink! It was a quaint little pub and was a great place to rest our feet.
It was getting dark by the time we emerged from the pub. Jet lag was trying to hit me hard, but I knew I had to power through until I went to sleep later that night if I was going to get on a correct sleep schedule for this time zone. All of us sitting in the back seat of the cab passed out to Pat's surprise as the cab driver pointed out that we were asleep. I spent the next couple hours trying to keep myself awake before I was supposed to meet Dan Henderson for training at 8. We were hungry again so we went in search of some food.
Just outside of the hotel were a number of small venues serving food; many were bagel shops. Duke took us to a pizza and pasta place that they had been to earlier in the week. I ordered a pasta primavera but because of the appetizers and bread that the others ordered, I didn't finish my plate and had some to take home for later.
A bunch of the guys were meeting at 8 in the workout rooms. I stopped up there to say hello before heading back down to meet up with Dan Henderson and his team. I really had no idea where it was he was going to train, but hopped in the cab with the rest of the group, no questions asked. One of the guys from the gym was there to escort us there. The cab weaved its way through the streets of Dublin into an industrial district where it dropped us off near a row of warehouses.
Right when we stepped out of the cab there was a guy ordering two others down on the ground to do some pushups. This was outside, in the rain. I couldn't help but take a photo as we walked down the row of closed roll up doors to the warehouse on the end. A special knock had the automated door rolling up to reveal a 15 by 20 gym with about 10 guys waiting for Hendo to arrive.
I looked around and was quite surprised to see the cleanliness and quality of equipment in such a hidden gem of a gym. The gym was named Kokoro. I took a moment to look up the meaning of the word, and in Japanese it loosely translates as, heart, the heart of things, or feeling. I could see the passion that these guys had for mma and their dedication to the support showed. I was shocked that Dan had found this small venue but apparently one of the guys had gone to train at Team Quest some time last year and had invited Dan out when he was in Ireland.
The bone chilling weather kept the warehouse extrememly cold but the guys had brought out a jet engine heater to heat the location in anticipation of Dan's arrival. Many of the guys were there just to watch but a few of them were ready to work out with Krzystzof and Carlos as Dan traded off working out with his training partners. Dan worked out lightly; first hitting pads with Carlos, lightly shadowboxing with Tarek, then grappling with Krzysztof. I could see the heat rising off of the guys after they were done working out; It was extremely cold inside the gym as the heater had been turned off not long after we had arrived.
After the hour and a half training session and a group picture, we piled into various cars and were taken back to the hotel. It was nice as so far everything we had been doing was within minutes of everything else. Back in the lobby I found tons of people in the hotel bar enjoying pints of Guiness and socializing. I was supposed to meet a crew to go out at 10:30. Lucky for me everyone was behind schedule and I had a chance to run up to my room to freshen up.
We met down in the lobby and ordered some cabs to take us to Temple Bar, an area of Dublin near the college that is home to a number of pubs, restaurants, and nightlife. It was close enough to the hotel to take a long walk, but because of the cold we vetoed that idea. The cabs dropped 9 or 10 of us off at the end of the street and we walked in search of a pub to call home.
After passing a number of suitable spots, we somehow honed in on the pub aptly named "Temple Bar" and stepped inside. We found a number of people we know that work with UFC and somehow everyone else that was meeting us out somehow managed to find us there. We spent a good part of the evening in this; me taking photos, and everyone else drinking and having a good time. I traded jobs with the bartender for a minute; I went behind the bar to pour a pint or two. It's definitely not my forte though, and I quit that job rather quickly. And he wasn't the best at taking photos either!
Some of us decided we wanted a change of scenery and we headed around the corner to club called Mezz. There was a live Reggae band playing and the place was wall to wall packed. It was too packed for my tastes and it wasn't long before I left the club by myself to head back to the first pub that half our group still occupied. We stayed there until they kicked us out at about 3am.
I'm always the hungry one and dragged 10 of us off towards a kebab place I had seen earlier in the evening. Every ordered something to eat except for Phil Baroni; he chose only a diet coke. It was here that things got a little crazy. We were all eating our food when I pointed out a couple guys who were eating just outside the window. They were local guys, and cleary drunk. One of them was eating his french fries like he was having a sexual experience with them. Phil reached out to offer him a french fry as well as some of his drink, through the window. I took photos because it was a pretty funny site. Well the guys friend didn't like it very much and marched right in to let phil know.
He poked his finger at Phil and said, "Don't you be taking photos of my friend- he's very drunk right now!" I stepped in quickly to try and circumvent a nasty situation and pointed out that I was the one taking the photos. He ignored the fact that I took credit for it and continued to stick his finger in Phil's face. Phil didn't react at all except to laugh and say to Pat Barry, "This is Dan Evenson's little brother, and he wants you to kick him in the leg!" Kim and Pat diffused the situation and Kim explained to him that these guys were professional fighters in town for the UFC. Pat went outside to get silly with the guys for a picture, but somehow the drunk friend decided to get aggressive. He came inside to where Pat was and got in his face and said, "Let's go one on one." Kim, drunk guy's friend, and a UFC fan that was at the restaurant jumped in to drag the guy outside and calm him down while Pat just shrugged his shoulders. The drunk guy went as far as to start arguing with the cops who had arrived to see what the commotion was all about.
We all found the whole situation humorous as we piled into three cabs back to the hotel. We found the rest of our group that we had gotten separated from in the hotel lobby and spent the next hour or so goofing off and sharing our stories from the evening. This goofing off led to leg kicks and then a nut shot from Bart Palaszewski to Pat Barry. Duke retaliated for Pat by delivering a couple brutal low kicks. To end off the night, Pat Barry made a prediction. "In 2009, I will kick someone in the leg so hard, his nose will bleed!" And as he told us this, he acted this out. I decided at this point to call it a night.
