Number Two (17 page)

Then I heard Kristina say, “Hey, where ya going?”

I turned around and she was smiling at me. I wasn't going anywhere.

What does one say the first time he meets a porn star?

“Hi!” a little too eagerly.

“Hi!” she said back. “What's your name?”

“I'm Jay,” I said. “You were great up there.”

“Thanks! Where you from? You're cute!” She knew all the lines.

“I just moved here. I'm a sportscaster!” Like she gave a shit.

“Really? That's awesome! Do you like L.A?”

I replied that I really,
really
liked L.A.

What followed was some small talk that I was terrible at, but like any woman who had probably spent her entire working life making men feel comfortable in her presence, she made me feel like I was the smartest and best looking guy in the room. And like so many men before me, I fell for everything, stopping short of purchasing the Kristina Rose pocket vagina but forking over money for a signed 8 by 10 and then finding it impossible not to grin from ear to ear as she offered to take a picture with me.

“Grab my ass!” she said. And I did. Chobi would not be thrilled when she saw the picture but, you know, when in Rome.

She hugged me goodbye and then moved on to the next customer. She had pocket replicas of her reproductive organs to sell!

I thought Kristina Rose was terrific. She was a hustler, and like
all adult film stars I worried about the circumstances that led her to this profession. But she was practical and real, and when it came to dealing with guys like me, she could have taught a lot of people who run businesses a thing or two about customer service. She had told me she wasn't doing porn anymore, just snapchats and Skype chats with guys on her computer for money. And of course, there was the dancing. The business had become “too sketchy,” she said. I wondered how many adult film stars had uttered those words upon leaving the business. She sounded like a veteran of any industry who, with the benefit of experience, could see things for what they really were. I hope everything worked out for her.

The drive home was pretty fun. We all agreed that none of us would ever return to this particular establishment again, much less this part of L.A. We had seen everything we needed to see here. I had broken the myth of adult film stars. My friends had humoured my little adventure. It was time for some late-night whiskey. My treat.

P
residents of major sports networks in both the United States and Canada probably spend a good 37 percent of their day taking ticket requests for sporting events from clients and employees. I am actually amazed how cool they always seem about it. My standard answer in that situation would be “I'm trying to run a major sports network here. Maybe get out your credit card and go buy tickets yourself, you pale, gangly wart.” Or something to that effect.

That said, a few months after moving to L.A., I ran into Fox Sports president Eric Shanks in our building on the 21st Century Fox lot, and after he asked how my wife and I were settling in to Los Angeles, I asked this question:

“Eric, my wife is a huge UFC fan. Any chance you would have access to a pair of tickets to UFC 167 this weekend? I'm happy to pay for them.”

“You don't have to pay for them,” Eric replied with a laugh. “How bloody do you want to get?”

How bloody do you want to get?
God, I love working for this company.

I wasn't lying when I said Chobi was a huge UFC fan. She's the person who turned me on to the UFC. Like a lot of boxing fans who grew up with that sport, I was dismissive of mixed martial arts as either barbaric or boring, or both. My argument was always the same: For every UFC pay-per-view event I'd seen, one good fight would be marred by four bad fights that involved two men in short-shorts hugging each other on the ground like a toddler smothering his teddy bear.

But soon after Chobi and I started dating she took a trip to Vegas with friends and got tickets to UFC 100 (through the president of TSN, of course). She came back telling tales of sequin-clad women ringside and an amazing crowd at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. So I decided to give the sport another shot. A regular routine for us wild ones on a Saturday night would be to order up the latest UFC pay-per-view, grab some Hot 'n' Spicy from Popeyes chicken, and watch grown men and women beat the living crap out of each other.

So now that I was working for Fox—the UFC's primary American broadcaster—I had access to all of this carnage in the flesh. With
extra bloody
UFC 167 tickets secured from my very kind employer, we booked a quick flight to Vegas for the weekend. I was about to experience my first MMA pay-per-view event in person.

Side note: One of the underrated bonuses of moving to Los Angeles? It's a one-hour flight to Las Vegas. I know plenty of people enjoy the drive, but once you live through the experience of leaving your home in L.A. and then checking in to your Las Vegas hotel
exactly
three hours later (door to door), it's difficult to get in your vehicle and go back down that highway. I love Vegas, but two days is perfect for me. In Canada a four-day trip was the stan
dard based on all the charter flights. You either flew down on a Thursday and returned on a Sunday or vice versa. For me, the old Canadian four-day trip was always a bit
too much
fun. Days one and two were always an all-night blast, day three was subdued by two straight hangovers, and day four was a flat-out writeoff. By the time I reached the end of a four-day Vegas trip, I was always convinced I was going to shit myself on the flight home because of alcohol poisoning.

That evening, Chobi and I put on the closest things either of us owned to a sequined dress (her) and an Affliction T-shirt and bedazzled jeans (me) and we walked across the Strip to the MGM for the fight. The main event that night featured Canadian Georges St-Pierre against bearded Texan upstart Johny Hendricks for the UFC welterweight title. A native of Montreal, St-Pierre was the undisputed star of the sport. With three welterweight championships to his name, this fight seemed like another easy challenge for a guy who'd once been a bouncer at a night club called Fuzzy.

A month previously Dan and I had been hired by the good folks at Coca-Cola—makers of NOS energy drink—to accompany a group of contest winners to St-Pierre's gym in Montreal for a training and workout session. St-Pierre's manager had told the Coca-Cola executives that the mostly affable St-Pierre hated only two things in life:

1. Meeting people

2. Speaking English

Dan and I were hired to serve as a buffer between the champ and the contest winners and to help break the ice. We were paid handsomely for our efforts, but really, anytime someone invites us to Montreal we go regardless of the gig because it is quite simply one of the greatest cities on planet Earth
.
As it turned out, Georges's English was just fine, probably better than ours, and if he
really didn't enjoy meeting the contest winners he certainly hid it very well. The group consisted of about ten people who were each allowed to bring along a friend or loved one. Georges put us through our paces at the gym, taking us step by step through several wrestling moves and even demonstrating some real grappling with his coach and sensei. It was hilarious to watch everyone beg Georges to “put them out” after he demonstrated the sleeper hold. One by one Georges would get behind his guests and twist their arm around so that the person was inadvertently applying pressure on the blood vessels in the neck that allowed oxygen to flow to the brain. (Georges only did it for a second each time, so no one actually collapsed in a heap on the mat.) The whole spectacle was like watching kids in a kindergarten class wait their turn for a ride at the amusement park. “Do me next, Champ! Do me!”

That evening in Las Vegas a month later was expected to be just another token title defence for St-Pierre, who at that point was considered pretty much unbeatable. Johny Hendricks was known as a tough Texas kid who could really take and throw a punch but was also considered a serious underdog against the seasoned MMA veteran. We enjoyed a nice dinner at L'Atelier De Joël Robuchon at the MGM Grand before making our way to the Grand Garden Arena where so many amazing boxing and UFC pay-per-view events had taken place over the years. On our way to the arena, wandering through the MGM casino, it was fascinating to see how this resort had aged so quickly. Once it was considered one of the hottest properties on the strip, but that was when Vegas had just started its mega development of grand new resorts and now it had long been surpassed by other newer, bigger, and more fashionable places. But what really caught our attention was the ridiculously frequent sighting of pairs of dudes wearing full Georges St-Pierre karate gear. In the casino. Without irony. They were on their way to
cheer for the champ, and they wanted to look like him too. It was frankly hilarious.

“If Georges actually saw all these guys, he would point and laugh,” said Chobi. She was probably right. He would also probably shout something insulting toward them
en français
that they would richly deserve.

We wandered into the arena and found our way to our seats. Eric Shanks wasn't kidding when he asked how bloody we wanted to get. We were sitting two rows away from the octagon. I could have stretched out and touched the shiny shaved head of former
Fear Factor
host Joe Rogan, who was now as well known for being a UFC commentator as Georges St-Pierre was for being an MMA fighter.
When I realized my wife was actually very serious about being an MMA fan and insisted on spending several Saturday nights watching UFC pay-per-view events, the most shocking development to me was the fact that Rogan was providing the colour commentary for the sport. “The janitor from
Newsradio
?
”
I mused. It didn't take him long to prove me to be a fool for ever doubting him. Rogan is just outstanding at his job and knows the sport inside and out, so much so that like all great colour commentators he is able to predict moves and strategies in the ring before they actually happen.

Sitting directly in front of us was the wife of Chael Sonnen, UFC middleweight and frequent analyst on our Fox Sports 1 UFC coverage. Chael was scheduled to fight friend and fellow middleweight Rashad Evans that evening in the fight right before the main event. I first became aware of Chael when he threw his microphone and stormed off the set during a satellite interview on TSN's
Off the Record with Michael Landsberg.
Imagine my surprise when I met Chael and he told me that he and Landsberg had actually become good friends. It wasn't so much that Chael was putting on an act; he
is just very, very good at promoting himself. In person, away from the camera, he is actually a soft-spoken, thoughtful, and extremely intelligent guy. That's not to say he isn't intelligent in the octagon, though. After beating Mauricio “Shogun” Rua in a UFC on Fox
event on the very first night Fox Sports 1 went on the air, he grabbed the mic seconds after being announced the winner. Exhausted, sweaty—a mess, really—he proceeded to promote UFC's upcoming coverage on Fox Sports 1. I had no idea how he had the presence of mind to gather his thoughts and speak in such an elegant and coherent fashion just
seconds
after giving and taking punches in front of thousands of people, but that's the same reason he was able to serve as a UFC commentator one week and then fight the next. The guy was a real pro. Unfortunately, less than a year later he was out of the sport entirely for failing multiple drug tests and basically humiliating himself. Maybe he wasn't so intelligent after all.

Facing Rashad Evans, Chael was the underdog that evening. Still, nothing prepared us for what happened when the two actually stepped into the ring. Chael was coming off a win and had a little momentum going in, but if Chael's fans had left their seats to go to the bathroom for the first round they would have missed the fight completely. About twenty seconds in Chael was being pummelled on the ground by Evans. I couldn't help but turn my eyes to Chael's wife, who was screaming bloody murder right in front of us. “GET UP! GET UP! GET UP!” she cried. I could only imagine how horrifying this must be for her. Each and every time Chael got into the octagon there was a chance of serious injury, and now he was taking a severe beating from his friend right in front of her eyes. This was his job, and she knew what she was getting into, but she was clearly shaken up when the referees stopped the fight before the first round was over. The entire arena seemed to be stunned at what they had just witnessed. Could Chael have
been injured? Or just outclassed? How to explain this one-sided massacre?

I was horrified that Mrs. Sonnen had to witness her husband face an epic beatdown, even though, based on Chael's record, she was probably used to that kind of thing. I turned to Chobi and promised her, right then and there, that she would never see me make a mess of myself like that in front of her at any point during our marriage.

As we waited for the main event, UFC president Dana White wandered over to our seats to say hello. “Having fun?” he asked, while warmly shaking my hand and then moving on to the other people in my row, all of whom were more important to the success of his sport than I. Arnold Schwarzenegger was sitting a few seats to our left, and when he got up to take a Terminator-sized pee he shook hands and greeted people like he was still running for California governor. Arnie: still got it.

Finally, it was time for the main event, and Johny Hendricks entered the ring to a chorus of boos and country music. The crowd was decidedly on the side of the champ, and this guy was to be nothing more than a footnote in the great fighting history of GSP. Soon after, the booming bass and heavy beats of “Man Ah Bad Man” by T.O.K. began to play and out came Georges in his traditional karate outfit and headband. The fight that took place once announcer Bruce Buffer had finished his introductions shocked everyone much more than any Chael Sonnen beatdown ever could.

GSP took a pummelling. It was obvious to anyone watching that he lost the fight. Hendricks took everything St-Pierre could dish out and returned fire with heavy, heavy punches that rocked the champ and hurt him like he had never been hurt before. The whole time, Chobi was on the edge of her seat cheering St-Pierre on, and when he was announced the winner at the end of the fight
she pumped her fist with a triumphant “Yes!” never caring for a second whether the decision was fair or not, just relieved that her MMA hero had prevailed and was still officially the champ. It was very similar to the way she cheers for her beloved Toronto Maple Leafs. When your favourite team hasn't won a Stanley Cup since the league expanded from six teams, you don't spend a lot of time worrying about the subtleties of “good” wins versus “bad” ones.

After returning to our hotel that night, I tried to distract myself by checking my losses at the Sports Book, but I just couldn't get the image of a screaming Mrs. Sonnen out of my head.

Back home in Santa Monica the next day, we saw that the apartment next to us had a collection of white sheets of paper plastered to the door. I had noticed one sheet of paper a week before and now it looked like someone had added enough to make a short story. Unable to contain my curiosity, I snuck over to the door and with Chobi protesting read the words on the paper that had been taped there. In summary, the person living in this apartment had failed to pay his rent for two months and these taped sheets of paper were eviction threats. I had seen the guy who lived there once or twice: blond hair, about my age, very quiet. We didn't hear a word out of him. Now it appeared he was a little short of funds, or perhaps just skipping out on the whole “pay rent to live in your apartment” thing, and it wouldn't be long until we had a new neighbour.

The next day I took Chobi to her favourite burger place in Los Angeles for lunch: Plan Check. The restaurant was on Sawtelle Boulevard on the border of Santa Monica and Brentwood, on a street informally known as “Little Osaka” that featured a myriad of Asian restaurants, mostly Japanese. Plan Check stood out as something different. This was a premium but casual burger joint and
we loved hitting it up. The kind of place that pretty much insisted on cooking your hamburger medium-rare and you felt like an idiot for asking them to leave it on the flat-top griddle for a few more minutes.