Ok, here are my thoughts on UFC 100.

First of all, to those claiming that this is not a great card...what on earth do you want? Two titles, GSP, Mir, Alves, Lesnar, Henderson, Bonner, Colemen, Jones (wow!), Fitch...what else do you want? About all that's missing is Fedor (which you'll never see), Randy (fighting soon), Silva (fighting soon), Penn (fighting soon), Griffin (fighting soon) and Royce himself. They can't throw every single fighter in the cage in one night, what would they do for 101? Is it the best card ever? Probably not, but we can't know 'til the fights are over. Quite belly aching and enjoy it.

Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir (chapter 2)



Yes, Lesnar is a freaking huge man. Yes, he is an incredibly fast learner. Yes, he has a very good chance of keeping that belt. But my money on Mir. In the UFC, Lesnar has defeated Herring, who isn't exactly a standout and Randy Courture. Randy is an amazing man, no doubt, but he's no heavy weight. And Randy was beating him until that one shot landed. While I think Lesnar will be in MMA for a while and will soon be an amazing fighter, I don't see that he's had the time to come up to the level he needs to for a fighter like Mir. A couple years of BJJ defense training aren't going to cut it against somebody like Mir. On top of that, Mir actually does have the strength to withstand Lesnar. No, he won't over power him, but if he fights smart and uses his strength correctly, he can keep the fight from turning into what we saw with Randy.

I'm hoping they decide to stand and we get to see Mir display more of that boxing we saw against Nogueira. But I am predicting a second or third round sub due to a heal hook. I hope Lesnar doesn't get hurt, because he honestly has incredible potential.

Random fact: Herring is the dude who knocked out that guy for kissing him during the pre-fight stare down in K-1. That's like my favorite MMA clip of all time. check it out

Georges St-Pierre vs. Thiago Alves

GSP by 4th round stoppage. It's very difficult to beat a guy who trains like GSP. But Alves has a pretty darned good chance.

Dan Henderson vs. Michael Bisping
Henderson by early third round KO. Bisping drops to feather weight. Fast forward six months: Silva again destroys Henderson.

Yoshihiro Akiyama vs. Alan Belcher
Don't know enough about these fighters to call it. From what I hear it will be a great fight.

Jon Fitch vs. Paulo Thiago
Fitch. The guy is tough.

Mark Coleman vs. Stephan Bonnar
Ok, I see why this fight is happening...you've got to make a nod to the past during UFC 100. So if you're going to throw in an old man with only half a lung...why not let some of the younger blood use him as a stepping stone? Bonnar was totally unable to handle Jon Jones (wow!) in his last fight, but nobody wants to see the other half of Griffin/Bonner to leave. So this should work well for him. If only Bonnar would show improvement in his fighting like Griffin has done.

Jon Jones (wow!) vs. Jake O'Brien
Yes, in my mind the "(wow!)" is part of the guy's name. The fight against Bonnar was unreal. From what I've read, O'Brien is simply a wrestler...and Jones (wow!) is a better wrestler. The only problem I have with Jones (wow!) is he seemed to tire a bit in the Bonnar fight. He needs to be sure to work on his cardio a TON. With his fighting style, he'll need it.

Oh, and btw...I'm seriously hoping and praying that Florien takes the belt. Then Penn will lay on the mat and throw a kicking, screaming fit until his mother comes and takes him off to bed, promising to call her lawyer in the morning. Then maybe White will be so embarressed he'll never let him step foot a UFC cage again.

Well, I am long over due for a real post. I've been enjoying playing around with my flickr page so much lately that I haven't taken the time to blog. Shame, shame, shame!

This week has been a total blast. Wednesday we spent the afternoon and evening swimming and cooking out with the Teague family. The general consensus was that we are really, really bad at volleyball, but it is fun nonetheless. We swam until about 10...which is waaaaay too late, I know, but it was still a lot of fun.

Thursday Ethan and I went back out to Eastwood dojo to learn some more grappling. I've learned two things in the past week: I have almost no clue what to do on the ground, and I'm loving working on it. This week Mike Suggs ran us through some different stand-up and strength drills...I about died. But I did learn a bit about passing guard and how to hold a guy still during an arm bar. Good stuff.

Last night was very interesting. The Teagues invited us to join them for a "poetry reading". Everybody had to dress up in a costume of some sort and bring a few poems to read. We decided to have it at our house 'cause we have more room and everybody brought finger food. The costumes were a blast...Stokton and Joshua both came as punks, Naomi and Anna were gypsies, BJ was a hobbit, Ethan was a menacing figure (and he was too!), Tolkien was a wood nymph and Phoenix was Hans Solo. I got some amazing shots of folks in costume and I'll be posting some of those soon to flickr. I dressed as a political prisoner...I wore a large, dark over coat and tattered clothes. Mom did her make-up magic and made my face look gaunt and hollow. It actually was pretty convincing...I couldn't stop eating! ;-)

Now we're about to leave for Michelle's house to celebrate the Fourth of July. Fun fun fun!

Ready To Dive! (29/30)

Ready To Dive! (29/30)
Originally uploaded by S Bavido

I've been having a lot of fun experimenting with water splashing off of stuff in our sink. This little dude was on the floor in our room and I figured he'd make an interesting subject. I like this one because it looks like he is about to dive into a pool.

BTW, if you leave comments, please leave them on the flickr page (click on the picture and use your Yahoo! id) so I can have all the comments together in one place.

Ah-ha! (23/30)

Ah-ha! (23/30)
Originally uploaded by S Bavido

Mom at Wal Mart. And you wonder why I am the way I am.

So, last week we took a van full of Bavidos and Teagues into Tulsa to watch UP. Several of the family had already seen it, but it was the first time for me. Here are my thoughts.

First, the previews. It seems pretty obvious from watching the trailers on this movie and Night at the Museum 2 that the summer is looking pretty slim in the family features department. I must say I was very interested by the trailer for The Princess and the Frog. Doing a Cajun fairy tale with voodoo practicing bad guys, frogs and gators is an excellent idea. I hope they do a good job of it.

Next, the short. I love the fact that Pixar puts these before their films. Ethan had told me he didn't like the short. Having seen "Partly Cloudy", I have decided that Ethan is a nincompoop. This can easily rival "For the Birds". I'm not going to give anything away (it's hard to talk about a three minute short without giving something away) so I'll just say that it was excellent and will be enjoyed for many years to come.

Ever since seeing the trailer, I have known that UP was going to be the movie of the year. Easily. Only Pixar has the bravery to use an elderly man as the main character. Had any other studio made this movie they would have made the old man crass and rude, but instead Pixar created an amazingly complex character with strengths and weaknesses. His love story is wonderfully, and touchingly, told.

UP contains some of the truest comedic moments in recent memory. Kevin and Doug, a large bird and a bird dog, are wonderful. Kevin is an expanded version of the awkward bird in For the Birds and Doug is a typical loving, stupid bird dog.

What has really surprised people is that, while UP can certainly be enjoyed by kids, it is not a kids movie. It is a very serious study in the topic of death and aging. It carries much more meaning for aging Baby Boomers than 7 year old kids. Nobody seems quite sure what to do about it. When we saw it there were a lot of couples with young children in the theater, and very few, if any, adults without kids. It is going to take a while for people to get used to the idea of animation as medium, rather than animation as genre. If Pixar continues to make films like this, I think people will soon be convinced.

Up until this point, my favorite Pixar movie has been Monsters, Inc. And with every Pixar film since then, I have used Monsters as my measuring stick. So the burning question I tried to answer for a couple days after seeign the movie was, "Is this a better film than Monsters?" And I couldn't answer. I finally decided that they are both wonderful films, but too different to really compare. Pete Docter has given us two of the greatest films of the decade. I can't wait to see what he does next.

Isaac (19/30)

Isaac (19/30)
Originally uploaded by S Bavido

Have you ever placed your hands on the keyboard and started typing away, only to look at the screen and realize that one of your hands was just a little bit off center and hyomh zdifrm;u nrvs,,;u trs;;u dytsmhr N fpm
y eptfu snpiy oy nrvsidr yjrm upi trs;oxr yjsy mpnpfu od hpomh yp trsf oy smuesu/?

I have not coached gymnastics camps for about four years. I've been spending my summers in Taiwan, and didn't have the chance to do much coaching. So this is my first summer in quite some time to coach. I'm loving it.

For years I have wanted to be the TAG level four coach. For various reasons, I have never been able to have that job. Now, the last summer that I work at Gymnastics City, I finally get that job. I have a group of level threes who want to move to level four, plus a couple level fives that I work with each day. In just the week and a half of camp so far I've seen some good improvements. On top of that, I've been working with the higher level gymnasts a fair amount on bars, and I'm really enjoying that.

Another thing I am enjoying very much is posting a new picture every day on my newly created flickr page. It's certainly challenging me to find and take interesting pictures that are worthy of posting.

And now I need to go to bed.