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There is something intriguing about MMA (click if you’re out of the loop)… It’s modern day Gladiators with a few rules. I’ve been pretty adamant against the UFC/WEC popularity for a few reasons, the biggest being how imitative the sport is. There are stories and videos of kids/teenagers staging their own MMA bouts with no adult supervision… basically backyard brawls leaving kids battered, bruised, and bloody.

But, there is a reason MMA is the fastest growing sport in America so I wanted to give it a fair shake. I think part of my disgust with it came about because my exposure to it is YouTube videos and Outside the Line specials, both of which are only going to show the most gruesome of moments. Last night was supposed to be a big night in the WEC series. Four fights, two of which were championship matches, including the much anticipated Faber vs Pulver.

I think i can sum up the effect of the night with two short sentences:

1) “I was wrong” - In the sense that it is a bit barbaric and the Aughts version of gladiator games I am probably still right. In the sense that it is imitative? Yeah, it is… but the more I watched the more I realized that the guys that are going to imitate this are already fighters. They’re the guys at school who already act tough, who already don’t back down, and who already probably cause problems. This isn’t to say that all MMA guys are “bad guys” but there are gyms where you can, as a teenager, go and train in MMA… The ones that stage the illegal backyard brawls are not the type to go to the gym anyway. The ones that want to do it right are going to go about it the “right” way… with exceptions on both sides.

Also, it’s not as gruesome as I thought. Yeah, it looks painful and there are a lot of “holy crap!” moments… plenty of turn your head moments and the gut-wrenching “just stop the dang fight!” moments… but i never thought someone was about to die or have a bone break in half.

2) “I’m hooked” - I could never do that crap. I’d tap out as soon as my opponent walked towards me (even though the banner behind one of the guys said “JesusDidn’tTap.Com“, i’d still have to tap (please forgive me Lord)). I’m a fan of a good boxing match, but the square ring action doesn’t even come close to comparing to the octagon action. These guys are skilled, its not just wild-arse beatdowns.

I don’t like that I like it though I never thought it was wrong to enjoy it… and I still don’t like certain aspects of it… but at least now that I’ve given it a chance, I understand the appeal and understand the proponents.

So, anyone wanna join me next week?

Popularity: 16% [?]

Category : Culture, Sports

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Hello. My name is Jeremy Wheeler. I have not been around these parts lately due to… general laziness? So lets get you caught up and get this blog ball rolling again.

1) I passed Old Testament Survey. I wasn’t too worried about it. “And the monogram says ‘I-DOUBLE U-I-N”

2) I started to learn Spanish because I want to. Relearn really. It is going alright, but I need to concentrate on it more. Hopefully I will be conversational by end of summer. “And the monogram says ‘I-DOUBLE U-I-N”

3) On Friday, June 6th we’re leaving for Branson. “And the monogram says ‘I-DOUBLE U-I-N”

4) Blake is a bad word. He got me addicted to Sports based MMORPGs. “FAIL”

5) I’m still addicted to soccer. FC Dallas fired their coach, probably the right thing to do, but horrible timing and situation surrounding it. They gave up a goal in stoppage time last night which resulted in a draw instead of a win. “FAIL”

6) I bought the new Deliriou5? It is so yummy. “And the monogram says ‘I-DOUBLE U-I-N”

7) I’m still fat but until last week I was losing weight and staying off the Dr. Peppers. But last week and a half is horrible. “FAIL”

to end on a positive note… “And the monogram says ‘I-DOUBLE U-I-N”

Popularity: 13% [?]

Category : Eh... Whatever, Family, Fatness, Me Dang It!, Music, School, Soccer, Sports, Video

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… Teach…

I disagree with that as a blanket statement, but sometimes its true… You also hear that those who can’t do, ref.

Not this guy…

I know it’s old (2006), but dang that Ref is in control! Shoot… I think he oughta be fighting… I love his reaction as he lets the guy down… throws his hand up like “Take that punk! I am THA MAN!”

Popularity: 11% [?]

Category : Eh... Whatever, Sports, Video

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So, yesterday my plan wasn’t to start a political rant… this is what I wanted to talk about:

Wednesday Night was supposed to be a night out with my oldest. We were going to make the trek to the American Airlines Center to take in her first Dallas Stars Hockey game. I’m not a huge hockey fan, I pay attention in passing, but we were excited. It would be a new experience for her and we’d get to spend a good four hours together. Unfortunately it didn’t go so well for me…

Something I ate at lunch decided to mess me up internally. I’ve eaten at this place a dozen times or more and never had any issues, but by the time I got home, I was literally doubling over in pain. I needed to somehow purge whatever it was from my system, and quite frankly I didn’t really care what path it took to be purged. But there was no way I was going to make it through the night…

Dionna was kind enough to change her plans and take Tristen, so its good that they had the time together. And after convincing Mackenzi that its fun to hang out with me, we decided to sit down at the laptop for some fun NickJr games… Dionna gives me a call when they get there and find a parking spot, we chat…

I set the phone down and reach back for the computer, not realizing that directly in the blind spot that my three year old’s sputnik head created was an opened blue powerade which my hand firmly knocked directly onto the laptop…. This is the second drink spilled on this laptop in the last month…

So i did what i could to salvage it then (i now know a lot of other things i could’ve done immediately to help out, but hindsight is 20/20). About 30 minutes later i decided to power it back up and all was well! For about 15 minutes… when it just shut off… and wouldn’t come back on at all… ever… See, this is a problem… while I back up all of my school work to our desktop PC, I don’t have a reliable backup for either computer… and dionna hadn’t backed up her company’s work in a long time… so, this was pretty stressful…

We disassembled it quite a bit, dried out the remaining powerade, cleaned it with rubbing alcohol, and let it all sit out disassembled the rest of the night. When I woke up Thursday morning, i put it all back together, pressed the power button… and… success!

Dionna backed up the rest of her data just in case, but all seems to be in working order… the keyboard is extremely sticky and frustrating, but at least our sanity is intact.

Popularity: 40% [?]

Category : Eh... Whatever, Family, Sports

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… has hit a lot of people in the circle of bloggers that i follow… not everyone, though. Amy is walking us through her Birthday Celebration Week (happy birthday Amy).

But I guess i’m in the group that doesn’t have much to say right now. The holidays were alright. I enjoyed some of it and didn’t enjoy some of it… so that’s that. I DID receive my World Civ book on tuesday and finished up the first assignment about two hours ago… class is in 1.5 hours so I’m set…

Oh, and for some reason I started another blog so i can talk about non-interesting stuff that used to go here but no longer does… it’s called “All The Balls“… so i guess you could say “Jeremy has All The Balls” and it’d be a true statement, people might just look at you funny. In the meantime Jaybrams will remain your primary source of inspiration and updates as far as my family, spiritual, worship, school, etc life goes… If you aren’t sure why I’d start a site which sole purpose revolves around balls, you need to get your head out of the gutter and check out the introduction post here.

Thanks for noticing.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Category : Eh... Whatever, Me Dang It!, Sports

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Are you kidding me??

74-62

Despite the striking resemblance, that is NOT a college basketball score.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Category : Football, Sports

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My first Division 1A game has come and gone with a happy ending: A 31-21 win for UNT, their first of the year and the first of the Todd Dodge era. I got a nice view of the whole tailgating scene… games of bean-bags, washers and parking lot football, grillin’ and beer bongs on the frat side of the parking lot. Country music, families, and canned beer on the alumni side. After about 45 minutes of walking around in the lot, we headed into the stadium to find a nice first-come-first-serve 10$ general admission seat on the fifty yard line… Not a bad deal really. A college football game for 10$ and you can sit basically anywhere you want other than the season ticket seats or the student section.

After a pretty boring first quarter, the second brought two interceptions returned for touchdowns and an amazing two yard pass that turned into a 100 Yard touchdown reception. Pretty sweet quarter. The rest of the game was pretty competitive, and UNT’s Defense actually turned in a very good performance. If “our” defense continues to play this well perhaps Dodge can have a respectable season after all… well, respectable in the sense that they win more than just one game…

All I had was my camera phone, and i couldn’t get any good shots… so, here’s the only three that were even halfway decent. But hey… It was dollar hot dog night.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Category : Football, Friends, Sports

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Goodbye:

… the image is right… it “was here,” but its gone now…

UK Tops LSU… awesome.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Category : Football, Sports

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Tomorrow I am going to my first Division 1A College Football game… oh wait… now its called the “Bowl Championship Division”or some such … goofy… so… here it is:

CLICK AND BE AMAZED!

Okay, so it’s not Texas A&M v Texas Tech, or LSU v UK, Or Stanford v TCU even… but, its still Div 1A dang it! Barely. I know … but don’t rain on my parade alright?

Go Mean Green.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Category : Football, Friends, Sports

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Originally submitted September 9, 2007 for ENGL 1310 @ Dallas Christian College. Emphasis added for website, copyright follows guidelines at bottom of the right sidebar.

There exists an odd phenomenon between American Football (hereafter referred to as “football”) fans and World Football (henceforth “soccer”) fans: Both feel their style of football is more the “real” sport, and both fail to realize that the sports share common roots. The inventor of American football, Walter Camp, was strongly influenced by William Ebb Ellis who commonly is credited with creating Rugby, a sport birthed directly from soccer (Bellis). Which fans, then, have a stronger argument for their beloved sport?
(more…)

Popularity: 16% [?]

Category : Essays, Football, School, Soccer, Sports

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