#the msg was probably recorded before he went away but the event was last week was while he was gallivanting in sicily so still vacay haha

[whiteshipnightjar]

Andy sent a message from his vacation to a special screening of Hot Rod

[thesportssoundoff]

“This is a bad show and yet....” The UFC Blachowicz vs Anderson Fight Night  Preview

Joey

February 10th, 2020

A week after chaos and controversy in Texas, we stay in the Southwest as the UFC heads to Rio Rancho, New Mexico for a little bit of a weird ass fight card. The UFC has a tendency to just put together shows in weird locations to fill their schedule and a show from the Santa Ana Star Center in New Mexico sort of just fits that mold with a very blegh card. There's good fights on here but for some reason, most of them lurk on the prelims while the main card is pretty much a big ball of fluff and weird Jackson-Wink style matchups. Corey Anderson vs Jan Blachowicz is a fine enough headliner I GUESS while Diego Sanchez vs Michel Perreira is one of those fights you have a morbid curiosity for live but eventually will turn to disgust once it happens. Names like Jim Miller, Scott Holtzman, Ray Borg and John Dodson lurk on the prelims if you're willing to dig around for them and any card with Tim Means on it probably warrants viewing. IF ANYTHING it feels like this card is really a more painful reminder of the downfall of Jackson-Wink and how most of the name fighters they've relied upon have either left, retired or fallen off the map completely. It's a dying gym and it's sort of brutal to see it go this route even if you found Greg Jackson and Mike WInklejohn to come off as perhaps arrogant and condescending at their peak. Either way, there's live fights and I'll be here so it's my duty to settle in, strap up and get ready to guide us through what is a very weird helter skelter-y fight night from New Mexico.

2020 Stat-O-Matic:

Debuting Fighters (3-2): Daniel Rodriguez, Brok Weaver Main Event Exemption:

Short Notice Fighters (2-2): DeQuan Townsend, Daniel Rodriguez Main Event Exemption:

Second Fight (2-2): Rodrigo Vargas Main Event Exemption: Vs Debutantes: Rodrigo Vargas

Cage Corrosion (Fighters who have not fought within a year of the date of the fight) (5-0):  Yancy Medeiros Main Event Exemption (1-0):

Undefeated Fighters (2-4):   Main Event Exemption (0-1):

Fighters with at least four fights in the UFC with 0 wins over competition still in the organization (2-1): Mark De La Rosa, Tim Means Main Event Exemption:

Weight Class Jumpers (Fighters competing outside of the weight class of their last fight even if they’re returning BACK to their “normal weight class”) (1-3): Ray Borg, Dequan Townsend Main Event Exemption ():

Twelve Precarious Ponderings

1- So does this main event not matter anymore? Regardless of how you might've felt about Corey Anderson and his streaking success or Jan Blachowicz's second half career resurgence, the fact of the matter was that IF Jones beat Reyes convincingly like most expected then Jones vs the winner of this fight felt like a lock for July or August. Consider that the UFC originally brought up the idea of Jones vs Jan in MSG to both camps but Jon passed on it or requested a new deal for it or whatever the case. Corey Anderson has some semblance of heat to him these days after smelting Johnny Walker and trying to develop or rabble up some sort of counter UFC fanbase. This WAS a #1 contender fight in theory but now? Is anybody going to want to see any fight at 205 lbs BESIDES Jones vs Reyes 2? I'm betting that's going to be a hard no. Now it is worth remembering that Jones once turned down Gus 2 (which the UFC thought would be a 1 million buy PPV) so that Glover Teix could get a title shot. This is also the UFC's rise of the champions era where champions can dictate their opponents. That said I bet it's going to be borderline riot territory if the UFC goes with the winner of this fight over a Reyes rematch.

2- The first fight featured a ton of wrasslin' as Jan couldn't stop Corey Anderson takedowns to save his life. The problem repeated itself vs Pat Cummins as well. This has been LESS of a problem for Jan since hitting this insane run he's been on since the Cummins' fight but Anderson hasn't gotten worse as a wrestler and if anything he's rounded out some of the holes in his game as a striker. Feels like a toughie for Jan to win BUT if Jan can take solace in anything, it's that Anderson has been KO'd twice since that fight and got his head bounced off the turf by Shogun Rua in a contested split decision loss. Jan also has rediscovered his kicking game which has been the catalyst for this renaissance run. There's some intrigue here but in all likelihood, this is Bader vs top 10 LHW territory where he can outgrapple dudes en route to the eventual fight with a big hitter who sleeps him.

3- Who WOULD win in a fight between Ryan Bader vs Corey Anderson?

4- Is it fair to just want Diego vs Michel to happen just so you can say you saw it happen?

5- At the risk of opening myself to critique and sassafrass, the main card fight I'm MOST looking forward to is Mara Romero vs Montana de la Rosa. I still think there's plenty of upside for Montana de la Rosa as she's very young but also pretty experienced with a 3-1 UFC record and a sole loss to Andrea Lee who is pretty good. She's got some discomfort on her feet that makes me worried about the ceiling but her grappling, positional awareness and fluidity is well worth seeing if it develops. For Mara Romero, I'm just sort of not sure what she is as a fighter. She debuted, upset the Titan FC bantamweight champ in her UFC debut, lost a close fight to Katlyn Chookagian, upset an undefeated Brazilian prospect in Brazil and then got swamped by Lauren Murphy in her next fight. Like Montana de la Rosa, there's a clear lack of comfort on the feet for extended periods of time but when the fight hits the mat, she's a lot of fun to watch usually. Kinda digging this fight on paper.

6- Jim Miller vs Scott Holtzman is weird because this is a fight that both guys tend to find a way to lose. Miller rolls into this one on a modest two fight winning streak which means he's one more kinda good mid tier guy away from getting thrust into a violence fight vs some sort of stylistic nightmare. Holtzman is still riding his "look great one fight, shit the next" rollercoaster as he comes into this one off violent smelting of Dong Hyung Ma after a loss to Nik Lentz after violently finishing Alan Patrick. So much of Holtzman's game seems to be broken down by whether or not he is "in" the fight after the first round since he seems incapable of grinding out those close brutal fights, especially when he doesn't have a pronounced strength advantage. Chances are this one ends poorly for Miller (who was rocked by Clay Guida twice in a minute) but this is Jim Miller and we are obligated to root for a dude who fought for years with lyme disease and had no idea.

7- Lando Vannata vs Yancy Medeiros in a battle of guys who can best be described as violent enhancement talent should be fun. It's worth remembering that fighters who have taken a year or more off and come back are at a ROUSING 5-0 in the early stages of 2020 and Medeiros hasn't fought since Jan of last year.

8- If Ray Borg makes weight, he's got a REALLY winnable fight against Rogerio Bontorin who is super powerful and hits hard but doesn't bring much else to the dance. How quickly can Borg ascend up the ranks with a win?

9- A bit ago,  @theanticool  and I discussed the plight of Jon Dodson; a super athlete who probably should've rounded out his game more en route to what is now the end of his athletic peak and the start of what would be the crafty veteran portion of his career except I don't think he's particularly crafty. Powerful? For sure. Still plenty fast? Yep. Lacking a change up to his game? Feels pretty evident. Dodson has a chance to pretty much stem the tide of irrelevancy against Nate Wood in another one of those low key great bantamweight fights. Wood was/is a bit of a wild man all action fighter but since coming into the UFC, he's settled down a bit and really refined his game to the tune of a 3-0 record all by stoppage. He's less frenetic, smarter and looks like a dude benefitting from UFC paychecks where he can probably train more/better. Wood vs Dodson should be awesome and especially in the first round where I can see Wood having trouble if Dodson comes out hot early.

10- I'm still not off the Macy Chiasson bandwagon but this fight with Nicco Montano is going to be pretty damn important for her. Nicco got off to a really strong start in her bantamweight debut vs Julianna Pena before she tired out or got sucked into prolonged grappling exchanges or whatever happened. I still think her weight class is down 10 lbs but she's got the stuff to really challenge Chiasson. This feels like a case of two women living in two opposite weight classes and having to meet in the middle to be honest.

11- Speaking of Nicco, she went from the first ever women's flyweight champion to the follow up fight to the curtain jerker. That's tough.

12- I've been a pretty damn bad judge of talent off of the Contender's Series but I really think that Brok Weaver is going to be a big time bust.

[bl6ckr0s3]

Continuance Pt.3

So I requested today off for the court hearing. I also requested Friday off to take a 4 day weekend in order to be able to have time to rest since my friend Crystal will be getting married this Saturday & me & Wendy will be attending her wedding for the photo shoot. I attended the Party launch event last Saturday with my friend Trinidad and shot it. I enjoyed myself and caught a lot of things that were going on there at the motorcycle shop. It was something different, but it was cool to be around bikes again since I actually do miss riding. Trinidad is really into choppers & bikes. So before I get into talking about today I'm just gonna talk about the event I shot first.

I pretty much shot the merch, the people, the skaters, the jumpy castle, the dogs that were brought there, the tattoo artist, etc. I got pretty much everything. I didn't do too much drinking since I was the designated driver. So Trinidad had fun that day and I got some photos of him with some bikes & a car. It's too bad because it's probably gonna be the last time we hung out because he was pretty sad the other night about our situation together. He remembers what I told him about Cait's reading, about my soulmate that I am waiting to meet, & the fact that we are just the temporary romance. He just now realizing it, so he figured now it's best to cut off seeing each other in person and just msg each other once in awhile which I agreed to because this is probably the best decision to make. This is done to avoid either one of us getting hurt and that's exactly what I wanted in the first place. He was the one who made the move on me, not me. I just went along with it because it felt good & peaceful being with him. He has his own shit to concentrate on doing to get another job and to help his family out and get himself together. I have to concentrate on getting my life back and getting full custody of my baby, and prepare better for my court case that got pushed up again because of the fact that the judge once again had a full schedule & ended up never having enough time for me to testify for my own hearing. I'm just happy now that my new lawyer is a much better prepared and organized experienced to be able to deal with Ricky. You should have seen the way he was shooting up a storm with his mouth in court. It wasn't even a hearing, it was just to verify our current baby exchange schedule and location which is going to remain the same & isn't going to change.

Wendy reminded me of how jealous and angry Ricky must have been because of the fact that I am trying to get back to normal with my life and Ricky just can't stand to see me enjoying myself. He told the judge that I'm not changing his diapers enough because he has rashes, that the baby has a uneven growth for his head because he's blaming me for laying the baby down too much while I'm watching movies, but hey I am handling the doctor's visits and taking him to the cranial specialist to handle the baby's head growing therapy. He's making it seem like i'm neglecting the baby by going to shows, but he didn't mention about the fact that I do photography on the side as a hobby, but that we can use it as a side gig because I'm trying to make income to take care of the baby because Ricky isn't working and doing shit. Ricky was pretty angry with the fact that Wendy & his ex wife Lissandra is there with me to testify against him for my case. He actually told the judge that on Talking Parents I'm not responding much on there, but once we allow the judge to read the whole conversation, she will see why I don't respond much to him because he's not using it for baby concern purposes. He's asking about his mail and other shit that shouldn't even be brought up. He tried talking to me directly in the court room instead of dealing with my attorney. So now he's surprised to see I have a new attorney representing me, that I have 2 people that will back me up in my case against him, he's complaining that we all got together and are now attacking him together. My attorney had to remind the judge that I have never got a chance to have my hearing because of his allegations with no solid evidence and that there is so much going on between our situation that our evidence would have to be admitted to show who he really is as a person. She will choose to use one of the videos recorded of him shoving my cousin to the side when she told him to back up away from my vehicle during the baby switch and when he argued with the police officer. So now it looks like Ricky is making himself look worse because we do have evidence on him. Once again, Josefina my attorney had to remind the judge that there are so much allegations made from him without any solid proof that my hearing has to be heard. It was so funny because he was saying that I have been with all these guys in the photos I took and the guys with motorcycles LOL. He told the judge that I am trying to take my life back by going out while I should be taking care of my baby and having him at the babysitter, but instead of him be a parent to watch over the baby.

One thing I wanted to do this week was make holy oil so that I will have a holy cleansing tool to help more people in the future. Trinidad will be one of them because he's got 2 demons with him that's probably causing him insomnia & his bi-polarism. He didn't want the help, but i'm going to help him anyways. I just don't have to say anything further to him. If whatever I do to help him really does cure his 'problems' then mission accomplished. As for now, I will work on making some holy oil & decide if I will do the exorcism ritual on him tonight. Tonight is also the best night of rituals for the red blood moon. Oh yeah, Erik, Brenda's husband's cousin has said that he feels so much better now and he is so happy that with whatever I did helped him. I will write more later on as things continue to update. I'm kind of all over the place with my anxiety from what happened today in court, but I'm dealing with it.