Hope everybody had a great Christmas, I know my family did. The kids of course got more than they probably needed and I would have to say I did as well. I always take a lot of time in getting my wife’s gift. I had her gift thought out for a couple of months, the only thing I had to do was get it shipped in. Which is always a problem, because she’s at the house more than I am. So this year I shipped it to my bank. Thanks for all the help this year, Guy. I like to surprise my wife and this year she had no idea what she was getting. I like to give gifts on Christmas day, but on Christmas Eve we went to her mother’s house and I decided to give it to her there. I guess I just wanted a crowd. So right before we left, I threw this box in front of her:

I thought the visualization was going to play a big role in it, so I wrapped a shoe box so the lid would come right off the top of it. Inside the shoe box I had glued a piece of wood in it to give it some weight and then wrapped the inside of the box so when she took the lid off, all she would see was her present.

She loved it, I’ll just leave it at that. I just like that I caught her off guard and I think I presented it well. The ring is off getting sized right now, so no pictures of that and I don’t know that my wife would want pictures of it anyway.

I don’t know what we’re doing for New Years, I know it won’t be much. So I hope everybody stays safe.

Weeks ago I went to my cousin’s wedding. We got a good picture back of JoGari and I, so here it is:

Remember boys she’s taken now and her husband Frankie has been doing years of martial arts and is somebody I wouldn’t mess with.

HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL! -matt

We did finish the Christmas Quiz on Friday night and Forums member Dr. Tonya was the winner. Once she picks her prize then I’ll let everyone know what she got. -matt

First off, I just wanted to let you know that Chrissy, the mother that I asked you all pray for last week, is doing much better than expected. Now, she is actually released from the hospital. So thank you all for that.

Received an email from a friend of mine about helping out some orphanages in the United States. So, here is a link for what I think is a very worthwhile cause:

Finally, I’m having a Christmas Quiz on the forums, to read more about it click here: Christmas Quiz The contest ends at midnight on Friday, so you still have a couple of days to submit your answers.

-matt

This last Thursday, Pat Miletich, my former coach and longtime friend returned to the cage. I’ve been waiting for Pat to fight again for a long time. With Pat helping me get ready for fights as much as he has and seeing all of his talents, I hated seeing Pat leave the industry on a loss. So I was always hoping that Pat would come in, get a fight against a formidable opponent and show everybody what he can really do. So last Thursday, Pat fought Thomas Denny and he did just that. He showed everybody that might have had a doubt that Pat still has what it takes to be a top fighter. So, with as good as Pat looked in the fight I hope he takes another one. I sat ringside with Jens (Pulver) on my right and Robbie (Lawler) on my left. We were pretty amped up for the fight and when Pat knocked Thomas out in the second round, we went crazy. I know that all three of us were in a big hug just jumping around. Some of you might know this, but when I would travel to Iowa on Monday, I would stay there all week and drive back on Friday. It was tough being away from my family, which is one of the biggest reasons I opened the HIT Squad; but Pat and the friendship we have really helped fill the void of my family not being around. To be honest, he played the role of my brother when I was in Iowa. Pat Miletich is family and nothing could ever happen that would ever make me think otherwise. But it was great going up there and seeing all the guys and it was good seeing Ryan, Mike C. and some other guys I know get some wins there as well. So here are some pictures of the show:

I went down to Texas, as Dollamur opened a new gym in South Lake, TX. It’s always good going down there and seeing Gary, Scotty, and Regina. They are just fun people to hang around. Had to spend the night down there as my last seminar kept me from making the latest flight back to Illinois, so we ended up playing some cards and listening to the UFC. Needless to say, I’ve got to send $200 in cash back down to Gary. Amy, TexasRN on the forums, wrote up a nice article and took plenty of pictures, here is the link to catch all of that: Article Pictures

I received an email earlier today about some land in Utah that is supposed to be going up for sale on Friday and could be opened up for oil drilling. They don’t believe there is enough oil underneath this land to affect the current price of gasoline at all; but it will definitely destroy lots of natural habitat for animals and hunting ground. I wouldn’t call myself an environmentalist, but as a hunter and someone who loves the outdoors, I don’t want to see this land taken away just to put up more oil rigs. Anyway here is a link to more information about this, in case anyone is interested in getting involved: Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance

-matt

Our friend Chrissy had a baby boy about a week ago. The baby is doing great; but please pray for continued healing and smooth road to recovery for Chrissy. Also we would appreciate prayers for the family and those taking care of her. -matt

Sorry, I wanted to get this blog out yesterday and mark the date, December 7th. Most of you probably know that Dec. 7th is a big day in American history. In the year 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. That piece of history reminds me a lot of September 11th. Twice in our history, we have been blind-sided by an enemy and it has taken us into a war. A lot of times we don’t start the wars, but we have to be there to help finish them. Both times, they brought the war to American soil, which I think is important to remember. So let’s remember our troops fighting in the war right now.

It was deer season here last weekend. My main concern was getting my son, Joey, his first buck. Thursday night we saw a nice buck. I got Joey’s gun up and he just froze, he couldn’t pull the trigger. We went out again Friday night after school and at about 4:15 we had four does come out. About five minutes later, we had a small buck come out and then five minutes after that we had a nice 7-pointer come out. Joey decided he wanted the deer, so he got the gun up. Joey was still nervous but he ended up getting a great shot on the deer. The deer ran about 60 yards and fell over. After Joey shot, Joey and I looked at each other and we slapped a high five. It was a lot more exciting having Joey take a deer than me. I remember when Joey was around 4 years old, I taught him how to ride a bike and him shooting a deer is another one of those things I will never forget.

Mark Zacher had told me when I first started working with him that he would get me a Mustang. I never thought it would have been his personal car. I put some videos up a couple of weeks ago about the car. As you can see, it’s an awesome machine. They say the car is rated over 700 horsepower. For me that’s hard to believe, but after driving it I can’t say that it isn’t. So here are some pictures of the car. A few photos have Mark in the picture, as you can tell he really didn’t want to see the car go down the road.

-matt

Hope everybody had a happy Thanksgiving, I know I had a great day. Some people have asked how closely I watch my diet during the holidays. Well, with me not having a fight coming up for a few months, I ate whatever I wanted to.

The day after Thanksgiving, Brandon came down with some of his buddies. So I got to see him on Friday night, then Saturday I did a little wrestling seminar for him and his buddies. After that we had a pool party for his birthday, which was November 6th. So all in all, I had a great weekend. We have some picture from Saturday below.

We get a lot of guys coming to the HIT Squad to train. We’ve got dorms that are very close to the gym and people from all over the world have been coming in and renting dorm rooms, which are about $100 a week, and then just walking the 200 yards to the gym. Well had a guy from the east coast, Chris Wing, come and work out with us for a couple of weeks. I didn’t know it at the time, but he wrote up a blog about every day he trained at the gym. I wish I had known, I probably would have been just a little bit nicer to him. So here’s a link to what he had to say:

Some photos from Brandon’s visit:

Also some photos from my visit to Yale a few weeks ago:

-matt

First I want to say that I hope everybody has a Happy Thanksgiving as I won’t talk to you all again until after the holiday. Looking forward to this weekend. I’ve got my son, Brandon, and some of his buddies coming down to do some wrestling and play around.

All last week I was up deer hunting at Buck Paradise in Canada. You talk about a great operation, I went up there with Legacy Sports. They supplied my gun, which is a .300 Win Mag (picture below). The gun came with the Nikko Stirling scope attached, so all I had to do was some fine tuning and it was ready to hunt with. The scope was last year’s NRA ‘Optics of the Year’ award winner. Had a great time with everybody up there. Grant Kuypers owns Buck Paradise, a really great guy. There’s only been one other place in my life where I always told myself that I was going to go back and that was Australia; but Buck Paradise has just made the list. We’re going to do some hunts in the future where I’m going to go up there and it will be open to the public as well to come up and bear hunt.

Along with Grant, I got to spend some time with Brett. Brett works for Legacy Sports and is moving to Illinois in the near future. So the good thing is we’ll be getting to see more of him as he’s a pleasure to be around. Brett and I are a lot alike, the one thing we’re not alike in is patience. We were going to hunt for five days and I mean five WHOLE days of hunting. You’re in the stand well before dawn and out of it well after the sun goes down. So my thought was with 5 days, I could really wait for something big. Brett didn’t see it that way. The first day, sometime around noon, Brett saw a deer come into his bait that was limping badly. Well he was already getting bored and decided to go ahead and take this buck and get it over with. Well he heard about this for the rest of the trip from me as I called him a sympathetic/management shooter. Needless to say, he took the rack of his deer home in a cooler and I don’t mean a big cooler either… Me on the other hand, I took my time. The first day I saw well over ten bucks, but nothing monstrous so I didn’t shoot. The second day I decided to bring my Bible and read it a bit while I sat out there. I got all the way through Genesis as I would read 2 or 3 lines and look up to see if a buck was coming in. The good thing about hunting over bait is the animal is going to stay there for a little while. The second day, I saw 9 bucks. The third day I got most of the way through Exodus and saw 7 or 8 bucks. I did see a nice 8-pointer that I thought about taking. The fourth day I realized time was running out so I know I’m going to have to shoot something here soon. I skimmed through Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. I wanted to get to some good stories, so when I got to Joshua I started reading hard and out pops a nice 10-pointer that was well outside the ears. I decided to go ahead and grab the gun and fire. So I shot, he ran about 20 yards and I got my first Canadian deer. If I had to guess, I’d say that he’d score around 140. Grant wrote up a little something on his website for me being there, you can read that HERE.

Was watching a John Wayne movie on the flight back, the movie was called Angel and the Bad Man. They had an interesting quote in the movie that I decided to write down, “The Lord moves in mysterious manner, at times using strange methods and instruments.” I liked it, so I thought I would share it with you. I think it helps to remember that God uses every experience, person and circumstance in our lives, the good and the bad, to make us into who He wants us to be.

Here is a little write up from one of the forums moderators, Amy, who was down at the Intrepid Center for Wounded Vets in San Antonio, TX about a week and a half ago. Rich Franklin and I were there visiting with some of the troops who had been wounded in Iraq. Amy, TexasRN on the forums, is a registered nurse and she was there getting some photos of me and Rich with the troops. You can read her account HERE.

Like I said, earlier, I hope everybody has a safe and happy Thanksgiving. We went out today and got the kids’ picture taken with Santa and a reindeer, so I thought I would share it with you.

-matt

Yesterday, I had my cousin-in-law’s wedding. Some of you might have heard her name before. Years ago, after a fight, I gave a shout out to a friend named JoGari. She made me mad that day because she asked for me to give her a shout-out after the fight; but when I got home and asked if she heard it, she told me she didn’t even watch the fight. Well, JoGari gets no more shout outs (this one doesn’t count). JoGari married Frankie last night. Hanna was in the wedding. Right before JoGari walked down the aisle, Hanna was supposed to run down the aisle ringing a bell yelling “The bride is coming!” Hanna did a great job at the rehearsal the night before, but didn’t do as well during the wedding. Audra played the role of the pitcher, I was the catcher and so I’m down at the front of the church, watching Hanna start to walk down the aisle. It was funny because she took two steps, she turned left and looked at all the people, she took another step, she turned right and looked at all the people. After that she didn’t ring the bell anymore and she didn’t say anything but “I want daddy.” So she ran all the way to me. Other than that, the wedding went flawlessly, then we went to the reception. After the toast, Gary (who is JoGari’s father) said a few words and then played a CD of him singing “I loved her first,” which was really nice. So congrats to JoGari and Frankie.

So after the reception, I get to watch the fights. I was very surprised with the Kenflo/Stevenson fight. I think Kenny’s take down defense really surprised Joe. On the Brock/Couture fight I think Randy had a great gameplan. I think he was doing good trying to wear Brock down. I think what surprised Randy so much was Brock’s athleticism and quick hands. So, all in all, I’m sure it was a great fight to watch live. I know I had a good time watching through the TV.

Here are a couple of videos from a show that Patrick and I did in the past. Patrick edited them and I thought they were kind of interesting in that you get to see what we do at these shows:

Another video I want to put up is about a car I’m getting from One More Round. Mark Zacher, the owner of One More Round and BC Ethic, is giving me his car in return for all the stuff I’ve done for them. I was very surprised to hear this, because I know he loves his vehicles. Click on the link below to watch part one, then you can watch parts 2 and 3 as well:
Video: BC Ethic Build - Part I

-matt