The weeks leading up to Oct. 17 and my MMA debut were a mix of stress, stress and more stress. My training had gone as well as I could've hoped (despite frequent exhaustion and occasional injury), and I was concluding my "fight camp" with a clarity of my limited strengths (basic grappling and jiujitsu, a few rudimentary submissions) and glaring weaknesses (pretty much everything to do with striking). My sparring sessions in the last few weeks of training had shown some signs of improvement (I was mostly able to control my instinct to flinch and turn away from incoming punches), but my striking offense frequently bordered on laughable. I'm reasonably strong given my background and physique, but my crappy balance and general lack of coordination makes for some hilariously ineffective combos and striking flurries. In other words, I knew going in that if I was going to win this fight, it was a lot more likely to happen during a grappling exchange on the mats, vs. a striking exchange on the feet.

My game-plan, such as it was, mostly consisted of "throw some jabs, move around a lot, try to tire him out in the first round, and then dive for a takedown in the second round," but even while I was focusing on this plan I knew it was pretty shaky at best. All I knew about my opponent Mike was that he'd had some taekwondo lessons as a kid, and that his weight-cut has been stalled for personal reasons (hence the change from fighting at 185lbs to our 195-pound "catchweight"). Those two facts indicated that he might feel comfortable throwing kicks (a central technique of TKD) and that his conditioning might be suspect. I repeatedly drilled a technique called "catching a kick" - basically waiting for your opponent to throw a kick and then responding by quickly grabbing their leg and using it to throw them off-balance. At best it's a risky move, since you have to "eat" a kick and absorb the blow, but for someone like me with effectively zero wrestling ability, it was a reasonable way to imagine getting the fight off our feet and onto the mats.

A few days before my wife, son and I were going to board a plane for Las Vegas, I received a distressing message from my opponent: his training and weight cut had gone very poorly, his weight was MUCH higher than expected, and he wasn't even sure if he was going to show up to the weigh-ins. Needless to say, I was both livid (I've been taking this seriously and training my ass off since late April!) and terrified (all this training for nothing!). I did my best to keep a civil tone in my replies, and I encouraged him to continue doing his best to get to the weight we agreed upon (195).

So we left for Vegas filled with uncertainty that the fight would even happen, but determined to make the best of the situation. My wife's Vegas-based friends and family had all bought tickets to the fight, as had several friends who also flew in for the event, so I felt a weird sense of responsibility to make sure that they didn't waste their money paying for a fight that might not happen. I knew this wasn't really logical - it wasn't me who was putting the fight into question - but nevertheless, I really didn't want everyone to be disappointed by a cancelled-at-the-last-minute fight.

There was some confusion about our hotel room at The Orleans (where all the fighters were being housed and where the event itself would happen), but a series of phone calls with various managers ultimately got it resolved. As we were making our way to our room a few hours before the weigh-ins, my wife spotted a woman and man chatting, and she noticed that the woman's name tag bore the same unusual name as the manager who'd helped me resolve the room issue over the phone, so we walked over to say hi and thank her in person. The guy she was chatting with turned out to be affiliated with Tuff-N-Uff (the fight organizers), and he gave me a funny look. "Are you supposed to fight Mike?" I confirmed, and mentioned that I wasn't even sure if Mike was going to show up. "He's definitely here, but he's WAY over weight. I've been helping him cut weight for the past few hours and he's down some from when he got here, but man, it's gonna be close. If there is more than 10 pounds separating two fighters they absolutely won't let you proceed, so if you want to fight this guy, you need to put on as much weight in the next couple hours as you possibly can!" This is how I ended up in the highly-unusual position of worrying about being UNDERweight prior to weigh-ins, and so I was pacing nervously while chugging several large bottles of water until just minutes before stepping on the scales.

Once we arrived at the weigh-ins on Thursday, I got my first look at my opponent Mike. He was a heavy-set Asian guy with several tattoos and a generally friendly demeanor, and he was there with his girlfriend (who was very friendly and polite). We shook hands, went through the pre-fight medical exam, and then did the weigh ins. I weighed in at ~198lbs (and felt like I was going to BURST from having and gulped down so much water to raise my weight), and Mike weighed in at ~207lbs. The officials asked me if I wanted to proceed with the fight in the "Light Heavyweight" class (205lbs) given that Mike was technically two pounds over the limit, and I immediately agreed. We shook hands, rounded up our stuff and left the arena once the rule review was completed.