Almost exactly one month back (March 31, 2018), I won my professional mixed martial arts (MMA) debut at Gladiator Challenge: “Redemption” inside Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln, California. The fight itself only lasted 56 seconds, but there’s a lot more going on in the average MMA fight than one would expect. Luckily, the powerful higher up folks of MMAmania and SBNation came together to help document all that went into my pro debut. To that end, they flew out resident MMAmania/BloodyElbow videographer — Mr. Case Harts — who pretty much followed me around and asked questions for the better part of four days. From the Friday weigh-ins to the actual fight and beyond, Case captured quite a bit of my lifestyle of fighting.

Ready to watch now is Episode 1, which is embedded above. In the first episode, Case covers a bit of my background, both in terms of martial arts and working here at MMAmania.com. In addition, Case covers weigh-in day activities of stepping on the scale at a dive bar, coming in well under weight, and picking up a candy apple in Old Sacramento for post-fight. In addition, the debut episode of this three-part, behind-the-scenes documentary covers the background info and sets the scene, but there’s a lot more to come.

Next time up, we’ll have actual training and Fight Night footage, both of myself and my teammate/MMAmania.com co-host Andrew Coyne. Plus, there’s a great post-fight interview in the bed of a pickup truck. What more could you want? Stay tuned here on MMAmania for Episode 2 of, “Behind-the-scenes of a pro MMA debut: Andrew Richardson.”