Bernard Hopkins is a fucking legend.

Saturday night I was in lovely Birmingham, England and after an exciting night of UFC fights I found myself back in my hotel - jet lagged, time-zone bewildered and hopped up on the devil’s cabbage.
I had just seen 11 great mixed martial arts bouts, but there was still one fight later that evening that I was looking forward to, a boxing match between Bernard Hopkins and Kelly Pavlik.
Bernard, the ultra crafty veteran at 40-fucking-3 years old -which is like 80 in boxing years - was taking on the young, white knockout artist that’s one of those mentally tough, hard workers you can’t help but root for. It was an awesome match up.

Thanks to the almost inconceivable ideas and work of people thousands of times smarter than me, they now have technology where I can watch shit saved on my DVR at home through the internet when I’m on the road.
Just talking about it gives me a big, fat, geek boner.
I fired up the laptop, and through it’s 15-inch screen I witnessed a pugilistic masterpiece.

Bernard Hopkins, showing incredible discipline and poise artfully out moved and out boxed the younger man, pitching a virtual shut out. It was one of the most beautiful displays of technical boxing and strategy that I’ve ever seen in a lifetime of watching the sport. For 12 rounds against one of the most dangerous young guns in boxing he used perfect defensive movement setting up precision attacks and counter attacks while taking very little punishment. It was a god damned, motherfucking work of art.

I think there’s a misconception that because I do commentary for the Ultimate Fighting Championship - and because of this goofy UFC vs Boxing argument that I got in with Lou Dibella on ESPN - that I’m not a fan of boxing. That couldn’t be more untrue.
I’ve always been a huge boxing fan, and in fact besides Mixed Martial Arts it’s the only sport I watch.
I’m also a huge fan of discipline and focus, and Bernard Hopkins has those qualities in levels that most other fighters can only dream of. I feed off the accomplishments of others. They inspire me, and they motivate me to push for more in my own life, and I feel like watching that fight has given me a fresh jolt of energy. He’s such a bad motherfucker that just watching him has raised my whole game.

One of the things I appreciate about his style the most is that he takes very little damage. I’ve never even seen him get hurt.
Some people have called him boring for it, but for me it’s not boring at all.
It’s just intelligent. If you know how hard it is to do what he does only then can you really appreciate the level artistry and discipline involved in such a performance.
The name of the game is to take as little punishment as possible while dishing out as much as possible, and no ones does it better than Hopkins did Saturday night.
At 43 years old he turned in one of the finest performances of his career - matched perhaps only by his artful destruction of Felix Trinidad.

I just watched it again on the big screen, and it was even better the second time around.
If you’re a fan of the sport you owe it to yourself to catch the replay when it airs on HBO.
I think once you see it you’ll likely agree that fight goes down in history as one of the greatest performances ever. Intelligence, skill, experience and execution all on display at humbling levels by a 43 year old man defying time by remaining at the top of the heap in one of the most dangerous sports in the world.
It’s the stuff of legends, and just watching it will make you better at everything you do.

I ran across this video the other day, it a fucking hilarious translation of a freestyle rap battle that Ben Hays and his friend Ryan of www.BenandRyan.com made.

I thought it was one of the best videos I’ve seen in a long time.

Here’s the original rap battle, which is actually just as entertaining and almost just as funny.

I also ran across some video of Evan Tanner talking in depth about life and the lessons that he’s learned along the way.
I received a ton of email from Evan’s fans about my blog entry about his death, so I wanted to put this up for the people that hadn’t seen it yet.
I think it’s a perfect example of what made Evan a really unique and special dude.

I’m in Boston right now in my hotel room at 3:21 in the morning, and I’ve got to leave in 2 hours to head out to the airport, so i figured I would just stay up and write a blog. I had a fucking tremendous time here this weekend.
The show at the Wilbur theater was off the hook. That place is an awesome spot for comedy. It seats a lot of people, but it’s all on 3 separate tiers so it’s really like 3 intimate comedy clubs sandwiched on top of each other for one big, bad ass show.
It’s literally the perfect theater for stand up comedy, because usually when you get over a 1000 people in a room you lose some of the intimacy, but the way the Wilbur is built everyone is right on top of you.
The crowd was fucking fantastic, and I hadn’t been there in almost 2 years, so I got to treat them to all new material.
Boston is where I started doing stand up, and coming back here to perform after I celebrated my 20th year of performing was a real trip down memory lane.

The weekend was also an interesting contrast of then and now, because after doing the historic Wilbur theater in Boston on Friday night, I did comedy at a Chinese restaurant in Chicopee tonight. Chicopee is way out in western Mass, and when I was starting out I did a ton of gigs out there. Back then you could make a decent living as a comic in the Boston area, but you had to do a lot of driving, and much of what I did was way out in western mass. As a matter of fact I did my first paid gig out that way when I opened for Lenny Clarke at a nightclub called Jay’s in Pittsfield.
I had barely been doing open mic nights for a year when I met Lenny, and he not only let me open for him, he also gave me some great advice and encouragement. Lenny had just come off of an HBO performance on a Rodney Dangerfield special and was a legend in the Boston stand up community, so the night was fucking huge for me. I’ll never forget it.
I’ll also never forget all the other times I drove out there, doing comedy nights in local bars and restaurants. It was where I cut my teeth as a comic, so it was a real treat to go back with Joey Diaz and Ari Shaffir and do some old school road comedy.

We had a great fucking time this weekend, and got some funny video that Brian will be editing and putting up as soon as we get back to LA.

I’ll be in Omaha, Nebraska for a gig at the Funny Bone on tuesday night, and then the UFC on Spike TV on Wednesday night, and topping the week off at one of my all time favorite clubs, The Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa beach, CA on Friday and Saturday.
To keep up with all my gigs so that you don’t miss when I’m coming to your town, sign up for my mailing list.

Thank you to everyone that came out to the shows this weekend, we had a fucking blast!!

The world has lost one of it’s most interesting characters.
The news spread all over the Internet yesterday that former UFC middleweight champion Evan Tanner is dead.
Evan had apparently gone out deep into the California desert looking for adventure and perished when he ran out of gas and water.
For any normal person the thought of traveling alone into the middle of the savage environment of Death Valley seems insane, but when I heard that’s what Evan Tanner was planning it made perfect sense.
Evan was a lot more than a “normal” person. He was a fascinating individual – a wandering spirit in search of adventure in the truest sense of the term.
I was a regular reader of Evan’s blog, and although I had always appreciated him as a fighter and a friendly person to talk to, it was in reading his writings that I came to better understand his spirit.

He would write with painful honesty and admirable vision about every aspect of his journey through this life, and when I would read his words I would always get food for thought.
Sometimes when I write, it’s like I’m reaching out to an old friend without a name or a face. I think of it as some new form of non-physical intimacy.
I’m trying to find my consciousness and merge it with yours, and as weird as it sounds I feel that connection with every myspace message and email I get.
We’re both alone and interfaced with a monitor in silence, and as I craft my sentences and express my ideas my intention is always for you to get an unfiltered view into my thoughts. I want you to take them with you.
I’m opening my head to merge my thoughts with you, and the only way that really works is if I’m 100% honest.

Reading Evan Tanner’s blog has on many occasions inspired me into that conclusion.
His blog was a porthole into the window of his soul, and reading his brave, uncensored thoughts gave me an invigorated sense of purpose to do the same.
Evan’s take on life was like that of a character in an adventure novel, and his thirst for experience was actually what lead him into fighting in the first place.

I can remember the first time I watched him fight, when I read that he learned his techniques from a video tape and was self trained. I thought that it takes a really unusual person to enter into the toughest sport in the world that way. He took that unusual energy and channeled it to become the UFC middleweight champion of the world.
He was that, and more.
This is an excerpt of one of his last blog entries where he was detailing the upcoming trip that would cost him his life:

“Treasure hunting in the desert.

One more week. I think one more week, and I’ll be ready to go…”

Evan Tanner has left the rest of us trapped in this life and has moved on to the next stage of existence where he will undoubtedly find adventure beyond his wildest imagination.
In doing so he has left the world a little less interesting.