And there I was on the Fourth of July weekend, lifting…

The kid’s trying folks, he really is…Easy to say, “I wanna be a fighter”…Much harder to do whatcha gotta do in order to BE one…

That tiny bit of black ink of my arm is the crest of Czechoslovakia, BTW… 

Look at me, as if I KNOW how to play bass, but once again the wonders of movies, huh??…haha…

And this second one needs NO explanation if you’ve ever seen my “No I don’t want to meet you” one eye-crossing gimmick…At least it never has gotten stuck that way….Yet….

The latest installment of that “ham nature” is my role in a local independent movie…

http://silenceofthebelle.com/  is the website for the movie and that page links to the Facebook page for the movie which has the pics from the filming and more info…

It was a great experience all the way around…I gotta say that acting is something that I really enjoy because of the intricacies of process and the development of the character and the story that surrounds the interactions the characters have…

Anyway, check out the website and let me know what you think….

From MMAJunkie.com…

“American Fight League: ERUPPTION” Live Results

by Dann Stupp [mmajunkie] on Mar 07, 2008 at 6:30 pm in – News -

LEXINGTON, Ky. — MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) is on scene for tonight’s American Fight League “ERUPPTION” event at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky.

Join us for live updates and official results as a host of former UFC fighters — including Rory Singer, Dan Christison and Junior Assuncao — compete on the night’s main card. Additionally, former UFC lightweight Diego Saraiva fights for the AFL’s first-ever 155-lb. title, and featherweight Rafael Assuncao hopes to improve upon his top-10 world ranking.

The night’s first fight starts at approximately 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT.

Blizzard-like conditions throughout the region have event organizers on standby, but a steady trickle of fans began filing through the doors once they opened at 7 p.m.

Tonight’s event is being filmed for possible future broadcast, but it’s not airing live.
—————————————————————————————————————————
 DAN CHRISTISON (10-6) VS. JOHN LEBLANC (1-7)

ROUND 1 — The big men throw some haymakers early before Christison pins his opponent against the cage. LeBlanc tosses Christison to the mat and connects on some punches as he gets back to his feet. Christison then unloads some leg kicks that wobble LeBlanc. The two men now stand and trade, and LeBlanc takes exception to his opponent’s leg kicks. Christison answers with a couple jabs and a few belly shots. They clinch again against the fence, and Christison works knees to the body and when LeBlanc creates some distance, they trade some more haymakers. As the round comes to a close, Christison scores the single-leg takedown and rains down some elbows before the bell sounds.

ROUND 2 — LeBlanc lands a body kick early, and then he trades leg kicks with Christison. Christison swarms in for the single-leg takedown, rattling the cage as he lands in half guard. Christison works to side mount and works some ground and pound and then elbows to the midsection. Christison then moves into full mount and rains down punch after punch. LeBlanc tries to roll to give up his back, and but Christison continues the assault, and the ref has seen enough.

Dan Christison def. John LeBlanc via TKO (strikes) — Round 2.

Go to :  www.magmypic.com   if you want to put yourself on a mag cover, too…LOL…

The episode was on Season 7 and is called, ‘True Life’ “I’m On A Diet”…

I never fail to get a call from some smartassenheimer buddy of mine who tells me, “Hey, they’re replaying that damn show you were on again”…

Funny thing is, I’ve had ppl I’ve never met before approach me, recognize me, and ask if I was on that show, and hit me up for some workout/diet advice, so it must have been somewhat memorable…hahaha…

Hooray for repeats, huh??…But seriously, that’s pretty good exposure over a 2 year span of time…

Despite what I was warned, MTV portrayed things well and didn’t ‘edit monster’ things incorrectly…

Pics #9-12 are from our segment

The way it went down was that my friend Kelly Hallermeier had an opportunity to be on the show after she and several friends had contacted MTV about doing a contest to see who could lose the most weight before Spring Break…The bird who lost the most would go on the trip scot-free…

Simple enough premise until the other friends dropped out of the picture…

MTV pre-interviewed Kelly, liked what they heard and her “Jersey Attitude”, so she was on…Problem being, she needed a trainer and a nutritionist for the program…

***Cue Mighty Mouse music here***

Yep, so I appeared as her trainer and my tag team wrestling partner was on the show as her ‘food dude’…

The thing that most ppl don’t realize about filming anything for tv is: IT TAKES NUMEROUS HOURS TO GET A LITTLE MINUTE OF FOOTAGE…

We had about 2 months of Mondays involved in MTV filming grocery shopping, workouts, dinners, cooking, etc. to get the 10 or so minutes that ended up on air…

Our segment was sandwiched b/n a Lehigh University collegiate wrestler making weight and a Miss Teen Texas beauty pageant competitor’s prep…

Lots of dramatic moments for the camera, a couple tears here and there, a bit of resistance to the workouts and diet, but after it was all said and done, she did her part and dropped a lot of weight…

Try 30 lbs. in 4 wks, and then an additional 10 or so after about 3 more weeks…

She went through a lot and I was pretty rough on her, having her hit the workouts hard and making her eat plain boiled chicken breast and brown rice…

Coulda added some salsa to that dry mess now that I think about it…haha…

But, after some tough times, she now has a beautiful new daughter and a happy family life w/her man…Good for her!…

If ya happen to see the rerun on MTV or MTV2, take a peek and lemme know what you think…

I grew up in our little farm house in Montana with my grandpa hollering at the tv, telling all of his heroes of the squared circle what he thought they should be doing in there…I used to sit and watch mesmerized as the guys he was screaming instructions to worked each other over mercilessly in the ring…

The superstars of the 80’s, wow, those were high times in wrestling…

Then my grandma would walk by the tv and say, “Oh, look at the great pretenders” and keep walking…This didn’t sit too well with grandpa…

I would have never thought that I would get in the ring someday…But I did…

I watched wrestling from that point on, hopping around the living room and jumping off the couch…This didn’t sit too well with grandma…

Then one of my best friends in high school, Big Tim Bartlett (RIP buddy), seemed to constantly have wrestling on his tube and for a short time, he had considered going to a ‘wrestling camp’ himself…

No doubt in my mind he would have done well…He was such a muscular giant of a guy, long hair, full of attitude, and came stock with all the charisma and intangibles that the camera loves…Too bad he never had the chance to shine in that arena…

I miss that guy all the time…

So, I kept up with WWF and WCW through the ‘hot era’ of wrestling when one day in Pharmaceutics class I saw an ad for a wrestling camp in WOW magazine…

Most likely I should have been listening to what our professor was on about, but I couldn’t tear my peepers away from that damn ad…

I saved the cash to go to the camp for a week and loved the business from day one of being in the ring…There was something about the whole drama and rough physicality of it that I really liked…

About a year passed from that first fateful experience, but I was hooked on the idea of being a wrestler and I left my temp. Indian Health Service pharmacy job in Tuba City, AZ to move to Ocala, Florida…

When I showed up in town, I didn’t have a Florida pharmacy license so I had no potential of working in my actual field, I didn’t know where I was going to live, and I didn’t have a chunk of money saved to try this adventure out…

But I didn’t care…I was chasing a dream that no one would have ever thought I could catch…

So, for that brief time in Florida, I wrestled as Aric Dylan “The Assassin” in various tag matches and some singles matches as well, all on the indy level…

The only time I ever appeared on WWE television was to carry Kenzo Suzuki out on his throne, with 3 other guys, all of us dressed as his ninja-type assistants complete w/kendo masks covering our faces…A few ppl told me they could recognize me on tv through the mask by my pointy broken nose and my goatee…LOL…

What a load of stories I have about those days…

I would run out of money and have to leave to do more temp. work in different Indian Health Service hospital pharmacies until I could come back to Florida and wrestle again…

You see, I can work in the gov’t system (IHS, VA, Bureau of Prisons) on any state pharmacy license, but to do private hospital, retail, or any other pharmacy, I have to be in possession of that state’s pharmacy license…

Not a very wise plan, huh??…The adult in me realizes that I should have never moved until I had my Florida pharmacy license in hand so that I wouldn’t have to go through all that nonsense of flying out to work for a few weeks or so, then coming back to Florida…

But life isn’t guaranteed to be long, nor productive…You take your chances by rushing after things, sometimes it pans out and sometimes it doesn’t…

But at least ya did it…

I’ve made some lifelong friends in the wrestling business…What I miss the most about wrestling is the ‘pack of boys’ hanging out after shows, usually partying and carrying on like a bunch of monkeys on crack…

Some of the characters, and I do mean absolute characters, you meet in the wrestling business would amaze you…You couldn’t make these ppl up in a cartoon, let alone real life…

My buddy Neil Faith is one of the guys I would consider a true life-long friend and a helluva worker in the ring..Another couple of ‘good fellas’ are my other wrestling buddies Jay “Showtime”, “Bad Ass” Kurt Bauer, and Yako Romero…

One of my favorite pics is of Neil and I squaring off at his wedding in Michigan…hahaha…

And here’s a pic of “Showtime” and I recently, laughing away at some of the old stories from those days…

Another unforgettable dude in wrestling is Bo Lee “The Funky White Boy”…

Somewhere I’ve got a ton of pics that I’ll have to post on here from wrestling…I know I have some of Yako and Kurt around…

I’ll never regret the time I spent in wrestling though…I started becoming more and more interested in pursuing MMA and I needed to go away to work for a much longer time to catch up on bills since I really didn’t work much while I was wrestling, so lo and behold, here I am 2 years later in AZ as an MMA fighter…

I learned a touch about the workings of promotions, the talent, athleticism, marketing, and charisma you need to succeed, and the fact that although most ppl think, “I can do that fake wrestling stuff”, they sure as hell never could…

It’s way harder and much more ‘real’ than outsiders could ever imagine…

These guys are literally putting their bodies and lives on the line, numerous nights a week, just to entertain the crowd…And you’d be amazed how little money they really make doing it…

I give those guys credit for taking all that punishment nightly, I know I wouldn’t want to have an MMA fight any more often than I have to…

Pro-wrestling and MMA are 2 different sides of the same coin…I take a lot of heat for saying that, but it’s completely true…

I’ll be the first to admit, I have plenty of days that I really do not want to catch a face full of punches or get out on the mat…It’s a lot easier to decide to lay on the bed after a long day of work and have my famous “little minute” of sleep, which turns into more like hours upon hours…

Those are the days that I have to be honest w/myself…Am I lazy or am I fully mashed from whatever the day has handed me??…

If it’s laziness causing that mood, I have to remind myself that “if you want what other ppl don’t have, you have to do what those ppl won’t do” (paraphrased)…Some days you need to really push yourself and get in there…

On the other hand, I know full well that if I am legitimately bushed, I’m going to have to give my body and more importantly, my mind, a day of rest…

If you’re not there mentally, you aren’t going to have any kind of worthwhile workout, I’d say…

Provided I drag myself in there the next day and don’t make it a habit of missing tons of workouts, there’s NADA wrong w/having that time away…You have to achieve a balance point b/n training and resting, I’d say…

I’ve used that analogy of a callous before for lifting, but it applies to ANY type of training, be it MMA, marathon running, etc….You can rub your hand hard for hours straight and all you’ll get is a bloody palm…You can rub your hand lightly for hours and you’ll get nothing…

But, rub that hand hard for a short period of time, then allow it to “recover”…What happens??…You develop a nice, fat callous, which is preciously analgous to what I want from my training; a thick, durable layer of protection from attack…

For some reason, motivation ebbs and flows in most of us…We seem to be focused and driven for some period of time and then off kilter after a while…

As a result, I’ve always taken at least a week off after fights to keep my mind ready to get back into training…

The amount of mental prep you need for a fight is MUCH greater than what anyone outside of the game would think…Even if your body is in decent repair after the fight, your mind sure won’t be…

Is there an explanation for this mental “hi-lo” cycle?…If I knew, I would be sure to crush that low motivation bit like a Coke can in Magnus Samuelsson’s palms (as you can gather, I’m a fan of World’s Strongest Man competition as well)…

The mental drive behind fighting and the psychological profile that fighters have is the most interesting aspect of the game, IMO…

My coach, Scott Trowbridge, tells me constantly that the greatest gains in the fight game will come from that mental component…

I believe him 110%…

That being said, it’s 9:55PM here and I need to get a workout accomplished!…