I recently rented the movie Never Back Down 2 The Beat Down from the Red Box. There are very few things that I would ever complain about paying $1 for, such as tap water, candy bars, chewing gum, stamps and now this movie.

I bought the first Never Back Down movie for $4 in a back alley flea market in Central Mexico; I liked it because it was a Mixed Martial Arts version of The Karate Kid. My expectations and excitement levels were as high as Lindsay Lohan on the freeway.

The first thing that drew me to this awful movie was the director/actor Michael Jai White. Most people would think of the guy who played Spawn in the movie from 1997, not me. My mind flashed back twenty years and I got him confused with Jaleel White, the kid who played Urkel in the show Family Matters.

Once I realized I wasn’t going to watch Urkel catch someone with a flying knee-bar, the movie went down hill faster than the Georgian Luge team.

*************Spoiler Alert**************

Four strapping young lads all wind up training under Case, a former World Champion who now lives in a motor home in a lumber yard, or maybe a garbage dump, or shipping yard, it wasn’t important. Each of these young men share a difficult past, as well as a lack of body hair. There is Mike, a former All-State wrestler who is angry at his dad for leaving his mom for another man. Word of this gets out and he often  gets picked on about it which causes him to fight angry. Zack is a former boxer who is forced out of the sport due to partially detached retinas, so he decides to train for an underground, unsanctioned MMA tournament as a safe alternative. Justin is a long haired, dorky kid who works at a comic book store. One night he is walking home when he is attacked by three bullies. After they stab him, he stumbles across Case’ “training camp” which is a pull-up bar, a punching bag, and a section of carpet set up next to his RV. Justin has all the anger issues of being picked on his whole life and does not know how to channel that energy so he lashes out. He is later kicked out of the dojo for brutally attacking those hooligans who beat him up in the beginning of the movie. The last fighter we meet is Tim, or Ted, who cares, his name isn’t important. He is played by former UFC fighter Todd Duffee. He is the giant with the heart of gold. One night while waiting for his mom to get off her shift at the strip club, he stops a fight and is offered a job as the security chief on the spot. He agrees to take the job as long as the boss fires his mom so she doesn’t have to work there anymore. I’m not really sure why that scene was in the movie.  I met Todd Duffee in Las Vegas before his fight with Mike Russow. I asked him to say “Hi this it Todd Duffee, check out FightPastor.com” into a camera. He looked at me, looked at the camera and said “NO!” Come to think of it, Rampage did the exact same thing to me. After I wiped the big boy tears away I went out and got plenty of other fighters to talk to the camera and make me feel validated as a man.

The think I did not like about the movie, besides not having Urkel, is that they only show 3 angry kids with troubled pasts training for an underground unsanctioned fight.

Real MMA takes a lot more training and discipline than these movies are willing to show.  Some of the best fighters in the world are college educated family men who don’t live to fight but rather they fight to live. I believe the Warrior had the best depiction of a true MMA fighter who  is played by Joel Edgerton, a teacher with a wife and kids who is fighting to keep his house. Movies like Never Back Down make MMA look like human cock-fighting which is one of the main reasons it has taken so long to become what it is today. The only good thing about the movie, besides the 2 minute scene with Not-Urkel practicing Karate with Lyoto Machida for no reason at all, is the fact that Eddie Bravo was brought in to help with the jiu jitsu to make it look more believable. There were some great submissions in the movie.

If you are looking for a movie to watch and feel great about yourself, watch the Care Bears movie because Never Back Down 2 left me wanting less.

I just got home from watching the Seattle Sounders 2-1 win against the New England Revolution. I was in good spirits and excited to sit down and watch some great fights on Versus.

The headlining fight of Nate Marquartd vs. Rick Story has been changed to Rick Story vs. Charlie Brenneman. Marquardt was not allowed to fight by the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission. Dana White said that Nate was cut from the UFC and would never fight in the Octagon again. With no explanition as to why Marquardt was not cleared to fight I have been left to use my imagination.

Here are my top ten reasons as to why Nate Marquardt was cut from the fight.

1. He was running an elaborate dog fighting ring;     Lets face it, Michael Vick pretty much ruined this time honored tradition by putting it in the spotlight. Now my uncle Leo has to hold his events in secret like some sort of criminal.

2. DVD Piracy;      Rumor has it that he was caught selling pirated versions of Disney movies out of his trunk.

3. Space Pox;     Much worse that chicken pox or even monkey pox, space pox comes from space so that makes it scarier.

4. Dysmenorrhea;       It’s gross. enough said

5. Vampirism;      He got bit by a vampire and now he sparkles under bright lights like one of the guys from Twilight, the commission felt that would be too distracting.

6. German flu;      Just like the regular flu, it just sounds dirtier.

7. I think I’m going to leave it at 6 reasons, anything else I would write from here could be taken as rude and inappropriate, and I really don’t want a Nate Marquardt with recently acquired extra time to come looking for me.

I have been unable to watch any of the latest fights, but there really haven’t been any that were able to draw my attention away from my newest hobby; I am the newest member of a scooter gang in the greater Seattle area. We call ourselves the Seagullz (you can tell how dangerous we are because we spell it with a “z”) and we ride around on our scooters loitering in front of signs that clearly say “No Loitering”.

With that being said, here are my thoughts on the fights coming up on July 2, 2011.

Dominick Cruz vs. Urijah Faber. I’ve seen Urijah take heaps of punishment in the ring and he never gives up. Unless Cruz is able to chop Faber’s legs the way Jose Aldo did back in April of 2010. I’m picking Urijah to win.

When I first started training I got the chance to meet Chris Leben. This was the same time the first season of The Ultimate Fighter was airing.  I have enjoyed watching his career with the UFC, especially within the last year.  On the other hand, Wanderlei Silva was plowing through opponents like Kristy Alley going through a plate of cupcakes. The guy has 33 wins, most of which were against tough opponents, but they were quite a while ago, and MMA is a young man’s game. There is a reason Michael Jordan no longer plays basketball, no one wants to see their hero jump up to snag a rebound and come crashing to the floor like Jeff Conaway after a night on the town. I am hoping to watch Leben climb to the top and fight for the championship, but he is coming off a knockout loss. I’m going to stick with my gut and say Leben pulls the win by 2nd round KO.

Tito Ortiz vs. Ryan Bader, I truly believe that Tito will somehow get injured and have to be pulled from the fight.  If not I will root for Tito, only because I bet $7.00 on Ryan Bader to win at UFC 126. I don’t normally risk that much money on a single fight, but i had a hot tip from a one-eyed man I met in the men’s room.

He was a kind old soul who said he once fought in UFC 200 back in the 80’s, and then he asked me for a dollar.

Melvin Guillard, Carlos Condit, and George Sotiropoulos will all win their fights by arm bar at the 2:34 mark of the second round.

Instead of watching GSP lay on top of Jake Shields for 25 minutes, I went to Everett Community College to watch CageWars.

Even though the UFC card was supposed to be the biggest fight ever, I somehow knew that GSP would give a performance that would be even more boring than the Royal Wedding.

Many of the fights ended early with either ref stoppage or a knock out which I believe happened in the first 12 seconds.

I was there to support Jonny Gilbertson who has been coming to Canyon Creek Church for a few months now. Over these last few months I have had the chance to get to know him a little bit, he is an amazing guy. I was at the gym last week and he was there getting ready for his fight. We grappled for a few rounds, and I stood about as much chance of getting a submission as Bethany Hamilton has of winning a clapping contest.

After watching a chick fight, a 115lb Youth MMA fight, and a 300lb Kickboxing match, I was getting excited to watch Jonny in action. I went back to pray for him just after the 11th fight. Fight twelve was Jeff Sweeny’s 12 second knock out which I didn’t see, but heard the cheers from the locker room.

Jonny came out to the loudest cheering I have heard since watching a WWF fight in the Key Arena, people even made signs.

Jonny worked for a quick single leg take-down and was able to maintain the top position throughout the fight, winning by decision after 3 rounds of dominating the fight.

Congratulations Jonny, I’m proud of you.

As I sat in the back of my buddy’s truck on the way to UFC Fight Night 24, I had plenty of time to think about the fights because the traffic going to the Key Arena is awful. It took almost 2 hours to get somewhere that should have only taken half an hour to get to.

It is the first time the UFC has come to Seattle and I would be darned (pardon my rough language) if I was going to miss the action.

The fights were great, I bought the event radio or whatever it is called so I was able to hear Mike Goldberg call it the Key center throughout the first fight, but I was also able to listen to Joe and Mike talk about the fights as if I were watching it on TV. I highly suggest that if you ever go to a live UFC fight; invest in one of these systems because it is much better than listening to the white trash in the stands yell at the fighters.

This was the third UFC event I have been to, but I have been to many other fights both locally and around the country. The Seattle fans were almost as bad as the fans of an all girls fight I went to in Wenatchee. There were 2 fights in the stands and heaps of drunken fans wandering through Key Arena yelling at the fighters.

 I would like to take a minute to complain about the Key Arena. It was built in 1962 for the World’s Fair…….. Who cares? It sucks tear it down. I will admit that I am on the husky side and the seats were not quite Kermit sized. I am only 5’10 but my knees were smushed against the seats in front of me.  The girl with the dual lazy eyes behind the counter took the lid off my soda, stating that it was stadium policy. This might be alright if the cup holders in the stupidly small seats held a 20oz bottle, but they do not and the bottle kept tipping over spilling soda on my lap. I don’t care if Elvis sang there, he is dead and no one who matters misses him. The Key Arena is good for nothing but the WNBA (which is less popular than prostate cancer) and the Roller Derby which makes cricket seem like a riveting and entertaining sport. I am not surprised that the Sonics left Seattle. Everyone blames Clay Bennett, but I think that they left because they knew how much the Key Arena sucked.

 I loved having the UFC come to Seattle, but seriously, next time come to a stadium that will fit Americans and their soda bottles without lids.