So it is the middle of my 2 week road trip and wow what a trip its been. Started off in Biloxi visiting with Alan Belcher, I spent 2 nights at his house and got several videos to put together of him, his training and his gym Remix MMA. The Purefight team is in the process of redesigning both his personal website as well as his Remix website, look for those to be redone and updated soon. I had talked to Alan on the phone but this was the first time I met him in person, I got to know him and quickly learned that he is a great guy, down to earth and I got along with him great.

From there I went to Charlotte for Fight Lab Promotions Cage Fights at the Epicentre, a fight card that took place on the rooftop of the Epicentre, one of the hottest spots for night life in the southeast region. It was a little chilly and misty out, but there was a giant tent over the cage and seats and enough energy to keep the place warm. The fights were exciting and can be seen on Purefight as well fightlabpros.com which was another site created by the Purefight team.

From there I flew to Baltimore the next morning and met up with my friend Joe who runs our wrestling website Flowrestling, the largest amateur wrestling website in the world. We got picked up and brought to Annapolis where we spent a few days covering the wrestling team at the Naval Academy. This stop was great as there are great people in that program from the coaches to wrestlers, and so no. Their wrestling coach, Bruce Burnett, was a multiple time Olympic and World team coach and it was just awesome to be able to sit down with him and pick his brain for over an hour, I could have done it all day but he is a busy man. We were introduced to the "Burnett Shuffle" in which his athletes mocked his beginning of practice warm up, it was hilarious and if you haven't seen the video you need to.

From there we rented a car in Baltimore (I'm not even gonna get into the issues we had with getting that car) and headed to New Jersey where we stayed with the Ghione family that Joe had met and stayed with before. What a great family, they treated us good, feeding us with great food and tons of it. They have 4 boys and it was crazy over there, kind of reminded me of my house growing up. Their son Jonny turned the camera on me and I did my first interview on the other side of the camera. While in Jersey we went to Shore Thing which is one of the top wrestling clubs in the country. Kurt Pellegrino used to wrestle and coach at that club and was there during the practice which was great because I got a chance to talk with him on camera about his fighting career, his upcoming fight with friend Frankie Edgar and his future.

From New Jersey we headed to Pennsylvania where we stopped by Easton, Lehigh, and Bloomsburg where Joe did a wrestling coverage. We honestly thought we were gonna run out of gas from Lehigh to Bloomsburg as the gas gauge showed us on empty for the last 20 miles of a turnpike, we rolled into the station basically on fumes.

The wrestling room at Bloomsburg is small and the wrestlers were getting at it, wrestling hard and making that room hot and steamy. These elements (sites, sounds and smells) brought me back to my college wrestling days and actually brought out emotions through my body that I hadn't felt in a long time. Wrestlers are badasses... they bust their asses and for the most part nobody gives a shit. But that's not why they do it. They do it because they love it. Nobody works like wrestlers do, the guys were dripping and the ground was covered in sweat after practice, they were exhausted and beat. It was their second workout of the day with classes in between, and now they had to go home and do their homework, watch what they eat, go to bed early to get up and do it again.

That was yesterday, now we are in Elizabethtown, PA where I dropped Joe off to do a coverage at a small college. I wanted to do a coverage at an mma gym not too far from here but when I contacted the guy he basically told me he didn't want us to come. This pissed me off at first, but whatever, it's his loss and anyone who comes on Purefight regularly knows that. I took the car to work at an internet cafe, except that there aren't any, anywhere in this town (what?!?!). So I am sitting here at a cafe with no internet writing this blog (which I will post as soon as I find some internet).

I am usually on the road by myself and traveling with someone else has been awesome. Joe and I come up with some good and funny ideas while in the car and have a few funny videos we have shot that we will put together soon. One was pretty funny, at least I thought so, kind of raunchy, but I might just post it anyway. The video is about how excited I was to stay in a hotel as opposed to sleeping in my car which I am forced to do sometimes when traveling for Purefight.

Tomorrow we are visiting American University to cover the wrestling team and then Thursday I am dropping Joe off in Baltimore where I will stay and tentatively catch a workout with Donald Cerrone and Leonard Garcia on Friday, before I come back to Pennsylvania to cover the Central Pennsylvania Warrior Challenge mma fight card on Friday night and then possibly cover another fight in Baltimore on Saturday before flying back home to Austin. It's been a good trip so far, stressful at times but good overall. The toughest thing about traveling like this is that I spend almost all of my time in the car or in the gym and I don't get a ton of time to update the site, but look out for some sweet videos to start popping up on Purefight in the next week or two. Until then, in the words of Joe Dirt, "keep on keepin on"

Mark