Roadtripping to see the UFC in the 1990s

I probably shouldn't be writing this down

So being a UFC fan in the 1990s was a little different than being a fan in the 21st Century.

Being a UFC fan in the 1990s meant you were seen as a crazy scumbag, trailer trash, blood-thirsty yokel and probably prone to violence.

I was only one out of four, ok, maybe one and a half.

But when I piled into an early 1990s Saab with my three best friends headed for fucking Kenner, Louisiana I’d say our combined scorecard checked off each category multiple times.

Before we could get going, we had to force our driver to remove at least two of the nine anntenas he had on the car.

This was back in the days when cell phones signals weren’t encrypted and if you had a the right kind of radio (or a portable UHF TV set) you could pick up people’s phone conversations.

If you were close to the phone you’d probably only hear half the conversation. If you were closer to the signal tower, you’d hear the whole thing.

Anyway this was my buddy, let’s call him Edfrey, Edfrey’s hobby was eavesdropping on strangers’ phone calls. I gotta admit, I never missed a chance to go riding around with him and violating strangers’ privacy.

The more antennas he had on the car, the more kinds of signals he could pick up so we understood the need for compromise here but since we would be driving through Louisiana for three and a half hours each way (plus another four hours across Texas just to get to foreign territory), discretion was of the utmost.

That’s because Texans driving through Louisiana are habitually preyed on by Louisiana law enforcement.

And we’d be carrying drugs. And probably a gun.

We were trying to be discrete on the drugs front too. We’d insisted that Edfrey’s girlfriend/creative partner Tidy only bring a very large batch of THC infused chocolate cookies and no actual bud.

We’d find out at the hotel that evening that she’d brought nearly a felony’s worth of bud which made the next morning very strained as we insisted Tidy dump it.

We being me and my other best friend Tarper. The only heavyweight from the Texas Panhandle in the party, Tarper would be handling any violence that didn’t call for Edfrey’s stungun and whatever armament Tidy had in her purse.

So yea, being a UFC fan in 1998 and 1999 put you on the fringe.

If you’ve ever wondered where Kenner, Louisiana is, it’s right by the NOLA airport and appears to be a bunch of roads, sidewalks and parking lots built exactly on the edge of the swamps that surround it on all sides.

The skeezy-ass hotel suites we stayed at had it all. The door frame showed every sign of having been kicked open since it had last been painted. It was kind of reassuring that the locking device at the top of the door appeared to have held.

The oven came with a leftover pizza slice from a previous tenant. Did I mention the two hookers across the hall who ran a series of clients through the place the whole time we were there?

So we had a seven hour drive, with a lunch break in Lake Charles, the first town in Louisiana big enough to have a casino of sorts. The parking lot of said casino was filled with the shittiest beaters from Texas as if the very poorest degenerate gamblers in Texas had driven just as far as they had to but no further.

Then three and a half increasingly paranoid hours in Louisiana as we listened in on a series of boring then bizarre trucker conversations with their wives back home (one lady put in the most perfunctory phone sex performance I’ve ever imagined while clearly being very busy with chores and kids) and later stuck to the police band at all times as the crime rate audibly increased the closer we got to the Big Easy.

Finally, we arrived at our hotel on a plot of concrete right on the edge of the muck and mire.

We just had time to eat something and get high in the hotel room. Not that we weren’t all baked on the green cookies.

Then it was off to the illustrious Lake Pontchartrain Center for the fights.

It was sort of an aluminum barn on a slab of concrete in a swamp. The crowd was what I’d call predominantly white.

All our fan demos — to review that’s crazy scumbags, trailer trash, blood-thirsty yokels and people probably prone to violence — were amply represented.

As the light failed in the parking lot, our paranoia levels were at the max. Or as Charlie Manson would say, fear is awareness. We were in a state of high awareness channeling our THC high into pure paranoia.

The fights though, ah the fights.

That part’s behind the paywall because this is an MMA newsletter.