1. Show up early for the first fight.
You're paying good money to see the fights so why show up for the main card when the undercard is just as exciting? For the Austin event, two fights stood out as the best of the bunch and both were preliminary bouts. Kyle Kingsbury and Jared Hammann had a three round war that won fight of the night and Rich Attonito vs Rafael Natal was great as well. Of course if you showed up at 7, you missed both fights.

The reason you need to show up early is that's the prime time to meet "mma celebrities." Before the first fight I met Herb Dean, Eddie Bravo, and Stitch and was able to talk a little bit with them because at that point nothing is really going on. After the first few bouts you're chances of even a handshake with anyone involved in the fights is zero because they have to do their jobs.

2. Bite the bullet and pay for good seats
I paid $300 for my seats and I was 5 rows back from the action and next to the entry way for all of the fighters. After sitting in that section and being able to see fighters walk in, meet Dana White and see Chael Sonnen pretending to fall asleep during the first minute of Nate Marquardt's fight, I can't see any other way to experience UFC. Its expensive but worth it. Seriously how often is UFC coming to your town? (unless you're in Las Vegas).

3. Hang around the concourses between fights
I met MC Hammer and a number of fighters from the card just hanging out by the concourse.

4. Research the fighters
If you get the chance to meet a fighter, try something other than "Great Fight" or "Oh man what a knockout." A lot of the fighters on the preliminary card (who you'll have the highest chance of meeting) have fought a number of great fighters in their career. For instance the first fight of the night featured Forrest Petz who has beaten Dan Hardy. Imagine seeing him after the fight and saying "Hey man, what was it like to fight Dan Hardy?"

1. Every sports bar will have a 'that guy' who knows nothing about the sport and only watches because its the championship and the bar has beer specials.

Today was no different than watching the BCS National Championship with people that don't know much about football. Today's 'that guy' was a man in his mid-30s who apparently got bored with the one TV showing Nascar and decided to interject his Madden-esque wisdom onto the sport of hockey yelling such insightful comments like "Skate faster" "Hit that guy" "Shoot the damn puck already" "Come on Fight! Fight! Fight! This is hockey where's the fighting?" "Push the Goalie out of the Way" and so on ... Also I want to note that as soon as Crosby scored he was the first and certainly not the last person to attempt a Canada sucks chant and interjected equally unintelligent insults including my favorite "You guys can have your stupid Hockey game but we have Football and Baseball" (forgetting the Blue Jays world series teams of the early 90s and the Canadian Football League)

Look its cool to cheer and talk about how a team is performing and even if you don't know much about the sport, you can still make educated commentary based on basic facts (example: "There isn't much time left, they really need to push in the offensive zone"). However don't make it so obvious that you don't know what's going on because it really annoys people trying to follow the game.

2. Sidney Crosby has a gold medal, Wayne Gretzky doesn't

For those of you who don't remember, NHL players weren't eligible to play in the Olympics until 1998. That year Gretzky made his olympic debut but failed to medal as Canada lost to Finland in the bronze medal game. Peter Forsberg scored his memorable shootout goal in 1994 and subsequently signed his first NHL contract after having played for Swedish club Modo.

3. Hot Canadian women don't watch sports at bars.

I'm not going to go into detail because I realize that I'm not the world's best looking guy but I just want to make that known. I've actually met some beautiful Canadian girls downtown (note to guys who took French in high school, drunk Canadian girls go crazy when you parlez vous francais).

4. When people chant U-S-A, U-S-A
Its fun to interject "Party in the" because we all need more Miley Cyrus in our lives. Wait did I just say that?

5. I will fly to Russia just to go see team USA in 2014.

Well Hakeem Nicks finished with 6 points and I lost 70 to 67 ... or so I thought. Two days later, the NFL made an official scoring change that won the game for me. My opponent started Kurt Warner and one of his touchdown passes was ruled a rushing touchdown by the receiver so I ended up winning 67 to 64.

So my theory is that God just got behind with the holiday prayers and then got to my request and thought "Oh man, if I don't grant this young man's wish, their faith in me will never be the same. Time for me to influence the NFL scoring committee."

Thanks God. Oh and for all you suckas praying for world peace or something dumb like that ... keep on praying. Like I said, God likes originality not lame prayers for world peace or an end to hunger or a cure for homosexuality.

Exhibit A 1989

Sammy Sosa 1989

Exhibit B 2009

From Getty Images