Kevin Marshall's America
I could feel their eyes on me, the man who hadn't showered yet that day.
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I woke up early during my third day in New York. Well, as early as I’m going to be awake on a Saturday morning.
Brian, who I was staying with in Manhattan, needed as much time as possible to recover from his head cold. Bearing that in mind and wanting to give him as little distraction as possible, I took to the street sans a shower and headed to find someplace to get coffee that had WiFi. This turned out to be much harder than expected. I ignored the Starbucks that jumped in front of me every two blocks and made an earnest attempt to support a smaller business. The first two I came across had every table occupied and a line near the door. I stumbled upon Oren’s Daily Roast on Lexington, which looked promising. But I discovered when I sat down with my order that there was no available WiFi. Still, the fig bar was good and the coffee was adequate. It also gave me the opportunity (or perhaps forced me to) without the self-destructive distractions that being perpetually online provides me.
Matt Hamill squares off with Alex Gustafsson
I did need to clear out my work e-mail inbox before the end of the weekend, so after an hour at Oren’s Daily Roast I finally caved in and hit a Starbucks. The first one I encountered had a hand-written note saying their Wi-Fi was down and offering their earnest, most sincere apology. I knew they meant it because it was in the handwriting, which was distinctly feminine but possessed just a hint of sloppiness. I almost went there anyway to get more writing done, but naturally there was another one two blocks up that did have working Wi-Fi. As soon as I sat down, I suddenly remembered that I never really did care much for the whole “corporate/small business” delineation, much to my shame, and spent a brief moment trying to figure out why I’d made the effort in the first place.
After a few hours had passed I returned to the apartment and an awake Brian. We ordered a proper breakfast and got a phone call from Brian’s friend Gabe, who was driving us to Philadelphia for my first ever live UFC event.
Gabe is very friendly and jovial, which isn’t quite what some would expect from a man who trained with professional head-shamshers and earns coin bouncing at clubs and pubs. It’s been my experience however, that this sort – and by that I mean bouncers and fighters, both and respectively – were rarely disagreeable people to be around. I’m sure, too, the fact that we had one of the best tickets to a major sporting event contributed in no small way to a better mood.
We arrived in Philadelphia shortly after 5:00pm. From the car window, the Philly we saw was an alien municipality boasting a disjointed skyline littered with cranes and jagged edges. I grew up in Upstate New York in a city that once was or could have been what Philly is in terms of manufacturing. It has forced the city and the region to re-examine its priorities. My hometown of Troy in particular has made great strides in the last ten years towards rebuilding a downtown essentially from scratch. For someone like me, driving through Philly and seeing the sights I saw felt like I had traveled back in time. It is exactly what I envisioned an economically viable area to be, but in 1985. I had to check my phone to make sure it was still working. Only when I was able to update my Twitter was I able to breathe easy with the knowledge that we hadn’t been sucked into a time vortex.
We pulled into what I can only describe as a vast campus of sports and entertainment complexes that included Lincoln Financial Field, Citizens Bank Park, and the Wells Fargo Arena, which respectively house the NFL’s Eagles, MLB’s Phillies, and NHL’s Flyers. The area is situated in industrial South Philly. It provided, to me, an almost mystical contrast to the blue collar industrial grind. Here were not only the places where we go to relieve and/or forget the travails of our nine to fives, but they’re also situated in the most convenient space possible. It honestly filled me with a sense of wonder and a desire to get back to Philly to see, one day, a Phillies or Eagles game. Or maybe my friends Joe or Tom can convince me to forego my ignorance of hockey and actually attend a Flyers games. Stranger things have happened.
As we approached Wells Fargo we noticed that there were a lot more young teenaged girls than we anticipated. It was only when we parked that we discovered the true purpose of their sojourn: while twenty grown men sought to dispatch, submit, or outlast their opponents in an eight-sided fenced mat in front of a crowd largely composed of sweaty bros in Affliction t-shirts and their high-heeled girlfriends, twenty-two-year-old Taylor Swift was playing to a sold out crowd of screaming teenagers and their chaperones at Lincoln Financial Field. For a moment, I had a dilemma: Taylor Swift or the UFC? If there was a God, and he did love me, he wouldn’t have asked me to choose.
Kidding. Of course we still went. The tickets, after all, were free.
View from our seats.
Our hook-up came through Brian, who I was staying with in New York, and our mutual UFC contact. He’d met her through mutual work and shared objectives, and introduced me to her through e-mailed correspondence and exposure to my writings. Through this connection I had landed a (very) part-time gig writing articles for UFC.com meant to generate interest, hype fighters, and create pageviews. It wasn’t a bad gig, though the organization’s insane fight schedule this calendar year has made pinning her down for a pitch extremely difficult. The event was also my first time meeting her. Halfway through, just as my bladder started screaming bloody murder, she took a respite from what appeared to be a harrowing schedule to say hi to us. I expressed my thanks, briefly and clumsily.
When first entering a live UFC event, one can’t help but be impressed at the lengths the organization goes to. The organization definitely knows their fans and how to cater to them. There were scantily-clad women in fishnets posing for pictures with men that, despite spending more time in the gym than at their place of employment, approached with an enthusiasm that betrayed their social awkwardness. They also had the “Octagon Nation Tour,” a large mobile unit that opened up to interactive booths, rare items from the sport’s past, a chance to meet many of the fighters, and no shortage of contests and giveaways. Inside there were more tables and giveaways and contests such as a mechanism that measured the power of your punch and compared it to the sport’s best sluggers.
We took our seats and were immediately struck with how goddamn lucky we were. We had a straight on view of the cage, and sat on the same side as Dana White and the other UFC brass. Though we were actually on the first level above the floor, we had a better vantage point than most in closer seats. From my vantage point I was able to spot the unmistakable attire and build of Mickey Rourke, Charles Barkley, and more.
The celebrity component at these events is both good and bad. Certainly,it lends the sport some credibility and a reputation as a place to be seen, both of which it could desperately use. On the other hand, it has encouraged a culture similar to that of boxing, where many who acquire tickets go there to be seen and, as such, don’t show up until well into the televised portion of the evening. As a fan of the sport itself, I don’t understand the mentality of the person who isn’t there for the first fight. I’ve seen enough preliminary bouts make it to air to know that some great things happen in front of empty seats. What’s more perplexing is that tickets are relatively expensive. Why let your dollar go to waste? To me it’s like showing up to a Giants game in the fourth quarter. I just can’t wrap my head around it.
The display at the Wells Fargo Arena.
The event itself was, despite being one of the more haphazard and injury-riddled cards in recent history, a highly memorable evening. In a separate post I’ll provide my thoughts on the fights and a rundown on the event itself.
After the undersized yet immensely skilled Rashad Evans dispatched Tito Ortiz in the second round of the main event, we took our leave. We had anticipated a bit of a struggle and as such took our time getting to Gabe’s vehicle. We ran into Keith Peterson, one of the referees for the evening, who Gabe knew from around the way. That was a bit surreal.
When we approached the area where our car was and were told we had to go all the way around, our hearts sunk into our stomach. Our worst fears had been realized: the UFC and Taylor Swift contingents were departing at the exact same time. Fight geeks and emotionally desperate half-drunk juice heads were jammed into a gridlock with fourteen-year-old girls piled into their one friend’s mom’s minivan. Men discussed the likelihood of Rashad Evans being able to overcome Jon Jones’ aggression and freakish reach while cars passed by with windows adorned with Taylor Swift lyrics such as “I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you.”
After an hour and a half, we finally got out of the parking lot. We went to a place called Tony Luke’s in South Philly, surrounded by nothing except for things lesser than our destination. We ordered the cheese steak and were not disappointed. Finally, I felt like we had fulfilled a primary mission in life, which was to eat that one food in that one city that everyone says is a prerequisite if you’re a resident of the Northeast.
We got home shortly after 4:00am. We immediately went to bed with the promise that we would wake a quarter after whenever the Hell we felt like it. Marla was briefly awoken from her slumber, and Brian joined her and immediately succumbed to the travails of the trip and the day. Me, as per the usual, I stayed up later than intended. I listened to music, staring at the fuzzy haze that would be the ceiling if I had not already taken out my industrial-strength prescription contacts. I reflected on the day and things around me. I had forgotten so many of the stressors of life and just marveled at how lucky I’d been in being able to have the last twenty-four hours.
I fell asleep, my head filled with dreams of headkicks, takedowns, and the unbridled joy that would come the following day when I finally got to see my little nephew again.
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