From Las Vegas — It's UFC 100 week here at Mandalay Bay, and had I not known, I would have had no idea I missed the first 99.
The Grocery Store Bagger just loves this stuff, but then the son-in-law also wears his shorts below his knees, has tattoos written in Chinese and he's not all that versed in English, and thinks a good day includes a new shipment in frozen foods.
He buys every fight, reads every magazine and warns me whatever I do -- do not go near some moody beast by the name of Brock Lesnar.
I'm scheduled to tease Lesnar on Thursday.
The daughter's just as crazed. She says it excites her -- so does the Bagger, and I really don't want to know any more.
But I'm too young to be old so soon, so I'm open-minded and figure I'll give it a try, knowing I will hate it -- beginning with the UFC's obsessed president, Dana White.
White made news a few months back using the derivation of an obscenity 42 times in a three-minute rant along with an anti-gay slur because he didn't like something a female reporter wrote. He's no relation to Jeff Kent, I'm told.
He says, "I'm a bleeping grown-up," which means cussing whenever he wants, but somehow manages to write 418 words for the premier magazine issue of "UFC" without including one obscenity.
"Someone else wrote it for me," admits White, who is not only bleeping hilarious and self-deprecating, but he makes it clear he's drinking Smart water, "because it's obvious I need it."
In some places he's portrayed as a monster, but with fight fans he's in-your-face cordial, and on a mission to educate the world about something he just loves, surrounded most of the time by camera-packing martial arts enthusiasts, White obliging every one of them.
It's only an hour or so later he reveals himself to be a freak of sorts, his office all black and white just as he comes across, one wall dedicated to a portrait of the back of Mike Tyson's head with size two-foot neck, another wall featuring a pair of steroid-enlarged tarantulas.
There's also a statue in the corner featuring an American flag, White receiving the Patriot Award recently in tuxedo ceremonies in Washington, D.C. No tie for White, of course.
"The lack of patriotism in this country makes me sick," he tells the Patriot Award audience after staging two shows for the military's benefit, $6 million going toward treatment of traumatic brain injuries suffered by soldiers in Iraq. "There is nothing more unselfish, brave and amazing than our American soldiers."
