My UFC Experience

November 19, 2005
It all started when I entered the UFC Fantasy Challenge at www.ufc.tv. I entered my picks for UFC 56 Full Force. It's very challenging. For each fight, points are awarded if you pick the correct winner, type of victory, the round it ends, and which minute of the round. If you get all four correct you are awarded bonus points. I seemed to be doing well as I was watching the PPV but they didn't show all the undercard fights. The next day I checked and it said my ranking was #1. I wasn't sure what this meant but I had a good feeling about it.

November 23, 2005
I got a phone call. The caller ID said Fertitta Enerprises. "Congratulations Eric, you won the Grand Prize!" The grand prize included a UFC T-Shirt, UFC beanie, The Ultimate Fighter Season 1 Box Set, and a trip to Ultimate Fight Night 3 on January 16th in Las Vegas. Zuffa was going to provide airfare for me and a guest to and from Las Vegas, a Limo ride from the airport to the hotel, two nights at the Alexis Park Resort, and two seats to the event.

Over the next few weeks I received my goodies in the mail and some legal paperwork for me to have notarized and return. I gave the DVD's to my brother-in-law Joey. I had already gotten them for my birthday, and he is a bigger fan of the UFC than I am.

January 15, 2006 11:30 AM I brought Joey as my guest. We flew out of Albany on Northwest Airlines. We had a two hour layover in Detroit, then on to Vegas.
5:00 PM Pacific time now. We landed in Vegas on time. At the baggage claim there was a limo driver holding a sign that said the name Eric Snaadgbi or something like that. I assumed that was for me. We got our bags, went to the hotel, and checked into our suite. Turns out most of the fighters were staying in the same hotel as us. By then it was 5:30. We walked across the street to the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, hoping to catch the end of the weigh-ins. They were done. Shoot. So we got a beer and walked around looking at the display cases when we met our first fighter, Phil Baroni. Luckily my bro Joey is not as shy as I am. We got his autograph, talked to him for a few minutes, then moved on.
Soon we met Pat Miletich and Jens Pulver. Jens kept introducing himself: "Hi I'm Jens." I guess there are a lot of people that don't recognize him but I did. They signed autographs, posed for pictures and talked to us for a few minutes. Pat's shirt said Fighting Solves Everything. We went back to the hotel to make some phone calls

6:00 PM We decided to do the Vegas thing so we got a cab and went to the strip. We got dropped off at Caesar's Palace and walked around for a while but didn't gamble any. Neither of us are big gamblers.

7:30 PM Eventually we had enough and went back to the Hard Rock. I really like the Hard Rock. The beers were only four dollars and there was a very good chance of meeting a fighter. We met UFC Middleweight Champion Rich Franklin. He was an amazingly down-to-earth guy. He signed autographs, posed for pictures, and talked to us for a few minutes. We're both teachers so we talked about the teaching business. I asked him if he missed teaching and he said he does miss the kids.

We mentioned to Rich that we also wanted to meet Welterweight Champ Matt Hughes who was at the craps table, but we didn't want to interrupt him. While we were waiting I gambled my first and only dollar in some video machine. I was down to 80 cents when Rich Franklin waved us over to meet Matt Hughes. I forgot all about my 80 cents and went to meet Matt. I told Matt it was cool to meet him and Rich joked "I won't tell him what you REALLY said about him!"

8:30 PM We met Light-Heavyweight Champ Chuck Liddell outside the Pink Taco. What a great name for a restaurant. He was in a huge rush but he still stopped to sign autographs and take pictures. For some reason I had my eyes closed when the picture was taken.
Now I had met 3 of the 4 champs. I only had to meet one more...

We were pretty hungry so we decided to go across the street and get a hamburger. There was a restaurant right across from the Hard Rock called Hamburger Mary's so we decided to check it out. We very quickly found out that Hamburger Mary's is a gay bar, not a burger restaurant. We didn't stay. There was a convenience store just up the street that had burgers and onions rings and no homosexual kissing.

January 16, 2005 8:00 AM We got up, showered, and went and picked up our tickets at the front desk. Ringside seats! We were in seats 7A and 8A. The doors didn't open until 3:30 so we decided to rent a car and go check out Vegas during the day.
9:30 AM The very first thing we did was go to Hoover Dam. It was absolutely amazing. This thing is huge! You can drive right across the dam. On one side you're in Nevada and it's 11:00 and on the other side of the dam you're in Arizona and it's 10:00
12:00 PM After lunch we decided to head back towards Vegas. We stopped by Sam Boyd Stadium, where the Monster Jam World Finals are held every year and got a picture for my boys. Then we drove down The Strip and took in the sights. Then we figured it was time to head back to our favorite place, the Hard Rock.

2:00 PM Back at the Hard Rock. We got a beer and watched the doors to The Joint. The camera crews were getting ready and it seemed like they were practicing for some sort of big entrance. Hmmm...
	We wandered around trying to meet some fighters. I spotted Jason Von Flue pacing around the casino in his warmups listening to music. He stopped to talk for a few minutes. I told him about the Fantasy Challenge and showed him how I picked him to win a 2nd round knockout today. (I was a little off but he still won.) What a great guy he was though, to meet and talk to fans just two hours before his fight.
	We also ran into Randy Couture as he was entering The Joint. He didn't really have time to talk to us but he did anyway. He was in a hurry to get inside because he was cornering Alex Karalexis in the first fight of the night. I swear, I wasn't intoxicated here, honest!

3:30 PM The doors opened and we went to our seats. We had to go through about five security people to get there. I hadn't realized how awesome these seats were. We were in the front row in the media section, near the Octagon Girls. We were on TV lots of times, I found out later.
The fights began at 4:15 and they were great. Jason Von Flue had the best fight of the night, I think, but Josh Burkman was good too. People kept trying to sit near us but the security folks ran them off. Vince Neil from Motley Crue was sitting behind us.
This was my first time seeing MMA fights live. It was strange not hearing Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg. The only sounds you could hear were the crowd yelling and the fighters smacking each other. It kind of strikes you when you're there in person: These guys are really trying to beat the sh!t out of each other! I found out what the special entrance was that they were practicing for when they announced the Matt Hughes / Royce Gracie fight. I bet some welterweights are going to be mad about that one! This picture is Chris Leben beating up on Jorge Rivera.

After the fights were done most people hurried out of the place, but we hung out and tried to meet some more of the fighters. I did get to meet Andrei Arlovski (the other champ) and a lot of other fighters. One person that was particularly cool was Joe Stevenson. I really liked him from The Ultimate Fighter 2, and it was nice to find out that he was a good guy in person too. He was making plans with his woman so we didn't want to interrupt but he talked with us anyway and took pictures. He joked that he really liked taking a picture with my bro more because I'm so much taller than he is. He may not be very tall but he could take me apart in about two seconds!

I made sure to meet and thank Dana White for everything he did for me. I had met and thanked him briefly in the middle of the fights, but there wasn't much time, so afterward I got to really spend some time telling him how awesome everything was. He was probably one of the happiest guys on the planet at that time. Maybe it was relief, I don't know, but he was REALLY happy. He thanked me for my support as much as I thanked him for the trip. Dana was one of the last people to leave the place. He stayed and shook hands and thanked people until the last.

Soon after meeting Joe Stevenson I met Brad Imes. He was also amazingly cool. He was handing out Brad Imes trading cards, so I got one autographed. Then I met Forrest Griffin. He really is as goofy, cool, and down-to-earth as he seems on TV. We also got to meet Royce Gracie. He was very nice. My bro got him to sign his ticket and a dollar.

Soon everybody filed out of The Joint and went out into the Hard Rock Cafe bar area. I ran into Brad Imes near the checkout counter and got a picture with him this time. He is as much bigger than me as I am bigger than Joe Stevenson, maybe even more. This guy is HUGE!

Out in the bar things were pretty cool. The fighters and the fans were mingling. Nobody was acting like an ass, everybody was very friendly. We met Rich Franklin again a couple of times. He was still very cool. He signed the UFC T-shirt that I had won. I told him to sign it big because I wasn't going to have anyone else sign it. He told my bro to go ahead and talk to Matt Hughes even though Matt was playing craps. My bro sort of tricked Matt into signing the other sides of the ticket and dollar that Royce Gracie had signed. So now he has two things signed by Royce Gracie on one side and Matt Hughes on the other. Matt just laughed about it when he found out. We also met Chris Leben. He was cool, just like everyone else. I got my picture with him, and the thing that surprised me about him is how much taller he is in person. On TV he always looked kind of short to me.
9:00 PM At some point we went to get something to eat and change. (We did not eat at Hamburger Mary's.) Then we headed back to the Hard Rock. It was a lot of fun. Nobody was drunk or fighting or anything that you might expect. Probably the most surreal moment of the night came later when we were watching the SpikeTV replay of Ultimate Fight Night 3 with Stephan Bonnar. When they showed him submitting James Irvin everybody cheered for him, and he was right there cheering with us!
Eventually the crowd thinned out and we went back to get some sleep. We had to get up at 4:00 AM to return our rental car and get to the airport. I never got to bed until 1:00 AM and never fell asleep until after 2:00 AM.
January 17, 2006 4:00 AM We did wake up at 4:00 like we were supposed to, checked out, and returned the rental car. This is where the real adventure begins. Las Vegas looks a lot different at 4 AM than it does in the afternoon. I did eventually find the rental car place, return the car, get to the airport, and get through security. Then we boarded our plane. And we waited. There was a problem with some circuit breaker. A mechanic fixed the problem, but then had a heck of a time putting the panel back on. Apparently you are not supposed to fly an airplane with a big hole in the side, so we waited. The mechanic did manage to get the panel back on, but it had taken an HOUR AND A HALF. We were going to miss our connecting flight in Minneapolis to get to Albany. That meant we would have to take a later flight to Detroit, then another flight to Albany. Instead of landing in Albany at 5:00 PM and getting home about 8:30 PM I would be landing in Albany (hopefully) at 10:30 PM and getting home whenever. I say hopefully because the weather in Albany was icy. We did land on time, visited with my niece for a few minutes, and hit the road about 11:15 PM. The weather wasn't too bad near Albany but it quickly turned to sh!t once we hit the Adirondacks. It started snowing and blowing quite badly. We had to go about 30 mph all the way home from then on. A drive that normally takes 3 hours took until 5:00 AM on Wednesday the 18th! And I had to work! I could have called in sick, and I probably should have considering I had had six hours sleep since Saturday night but I was still pretty wired. I went to work, came home, spent time with my family, and went to bed at the normal time. And I slept like a friggin rock.
And now some frequently asked questions: Why are all your pictures so grainy? Umm, yeah, it turns out you are not supposed to put cameras and film in your checked luggage because they X-ray them at the airport. I found this out AFTER I had checked them. I asked a security guy and he said I should be okay. Why do you have your eyes closed sometimes? Two reasons: One, the battery in my camera was dying so it took FOREVER to flash, and Two, because I'm an idiot. What's with the pretend punching pose thing? Apparently this is how you are supposed to pose when getting your picture taken with a fighter. I didn't make the rules, I just follow them.