Jim Miller and Amanda Nunes UFC Stuff

My wife and I had a pretty busy Saturday, trying to fit as much tourist stuff as we could into the weekend before Monday, when she heads back home and I get back to my training. We kicked the day off by traveling to Old Town San Diego.

Our first stop was the Mormon Battalion Visitor's Center. I visited it a handful of times when I was a missionary here many years ago, but since then they've remade the building and the tour with a higher-tech interactive presentation. I thought it was pretty good, telling the story of how several hundred Mormons were enlisted into the Army during the Mexican-American War and eventually assigned to build a wagon road to California, winding up in San Diego and helping to build the city.

I even found a wagon to drive, although it was woefully short on livestock to pull it. We panned for gold in the courtyard and looked at some artifacts, and then it was time for lunch. We had some great food at The Tequila Factory. I opted for carnitas, while my wife ordered some shrimp fajitas. It was good. We ate way too much, but it was worth it. After that we wandered down the street a bit and looked at shops and booths.

After that we headed out to Petco Park to watch the Padres take on the Pirates. We had some excitement on the way there, though. A car changed lanes into the side of my car, breaking my mirror and scraping/denting panels along the left side of my car. He looked over at me, then slowed down and pulled over as if to exchange information with us. We started to pull in behind him when he took off again, trying to execute a hit-and-run. We followed him, as did a couple of other cars. Eventually he got caught in traffic and we caught up to him in the left turn lane. He made a U-turn and then a quick right, and my wife got a picture of his license plate. After his next turn we were headed toward a couple of police cars with their lights on for another accident, so he flipped around again and took off. I decided not to chase him anymore, and we pulled up to the police and told them what had happened. We filed a report with them, and he got pulled over somewhere else while we were talking to the police. They couldn't arrest him for the accident because they didn't witness it, but hopefully with the license plate number and the police report we won't have too much trouble with our insurance company. It does stink to have my new car wrecked, though. I've only had it for about six months. Without anything else to do with the car, we continued on to the ballpark. 

It was free hat night, so we got Padres hats as we entered the gates. I posted this selfie on Twitter, and we saw it on the big scoreboard a few times during the game. I tried to take a picture of us on the scoreboard, but it was too bright and it washed out on my camera. It was a pretty good game, and the Padres beat the Pirates 4-2. That makes the Padres 2-0 when I am in attendance.

In addition to free hats, they had fireworks after the game. It was a good show, and between the game and the fireworks it was well worth the price of admission. We had to get one more picture on the way out. We packed a lot into one day, and it was a lot of fun. It stinks that some d-bag pulled a hit-and-run on us and smashed up my car, but I'm glad that neither of us was hurt. Hopefully my insurance company will take care of us. I haven't been extremely impressed with them lately, and if we have too much trouble on this claim I will definitely be switching companies.

There was a pretty big UFC event on Saturday night, but I totally missed it. It sounds like it was an okay event, unless you're a Daniel Cormier fan. I picked up a lot of cards that don't have anything to do with any of the fighters who fought in UFC 214 this weekend, but I can't make everything match current events. These first ones are a trio of Jim Miller autographs along with one Travis Browne signature. One of the Jim Miller cards is an auto-relic from 2017 Topps UFC Knockout. I also have a Miller autograph from 2011 Topps Finest, and the bottom two signatures come from 2014 Topps UFC Bloodlines. Another copy of that Jim Miller Bloodlines autograph appears in a post from a couple of days ago. I guess I am just a sucker for cheap UFC hits and parallels.

Additionally, I grabbed a trio of Jim Miller relic cards. The top one is a Finest Threads relic from 2011 Topps UFC Finest, while the mat relics hail from 2011 Topps UFC Finest and 2012 Topps UFC Finest. The 2011 mat piece comes from UFC 108, where Miller defeated Duane Ludwig. The 2012 mat relic comes from UFC on FX 1, where Miller defeated Melvin Guillard in the main event.

In addition to a bunch of Jim Miller cards, I also got four different parallel cards featuring Amanda Nunes. The biggest grab was the card in the upper left, a Blue Flame parallel from the online-only 2017 Topps UFC Fire product. That one is numbered # 11 / 25. The next two come from 2014 Topps UFC Champions. In the upper right is a Purple parallel numbered # 73 / 88, which was apparently a retail-only parallel. There was also a Hobby parallel numbered to # / 88, but it had blue borders. The card in the lower left is a Black parallel, numbered # 054 / 188. The card in the lower right comes from the next year's Champions release. It's a Black parallel, numbered # 091 / 188.

Clearing Out the Draft Folder with Some UFC Cards

I am not particularly enthusiastic about this post, but I hate to waste a scanning session by deleting old drafts from my queue. I pick up a handful of UFC cards from my usual eBay source back in February. He lists auctions that end on the night UFC events, featuring the fighters on that particular card. In this case, the event was UFC 208.

This is a copy of Jim Miller's autograph from 2014 Topps UFC Bloodlines. I don't keep very good track of my collection, so I probably have at least two or three copies of this card. The seller I buy these from starts most things at $0.01, so I'll just roll through and put $0.75 or $1.00 bids on anything that looks interesting. I wind up winning a handful of cards each time, and get a little stack of hits for the price of a pack or two.

This one is a Green parallel of Miller's 2012 Topps UFC Knockout card. It's numbered # 06 / 88. Miller hasn't had much good luck lately, losing a couple of decisions to Dustin Poirier and Anthony Pettis after tough battles. He at least got a Fight of the Night bonus for his fight against Poirier in UFC 208.

I snapped up this Roan Carneiro Gold parallel from 2015 Topps UFC Champions because it was a Gold parallel. It is a low-numbered card, marked as # 08 / 25. He lost his fight at UFC 208, falling by unanimous decision to Ryan LaFlare. A couple of months later, the UFC cut him from the roster.

Ronaldo 'Jacare' Souza got a Performance of the Night bonus at UFC 108 for his Submission of Tim Boetsch. This low-numbered Black parallel comes from 2014 Topps UFC Bloodlines. The Black parallels from this set look pretty much like base cards, only darker. It's a good thing they have serial numbers on the back, with this one being # 17 / 25 in the print run.

The last card for the post is another Souza card, a Gold parallel from 2015 Topps UFC Knockout. It's numbered # 63 / 99. There's not much else to say about it, as the only fighter in this post that I specifically collect is Jim Miller. The other cards were purchased because they were low-numbered and/or Gold parallels.

It does feel nice to get this post written and out of the queue, though, as it's one of my oldest drafts. I'll probably be clearing out some more old posts in the next couple of weeks, as I'll be away from my scanner for a while.

Recent UFC Pickups of All Kinds

I haven't watched the last couple of UFC events, just because I've been busy when they were on. I'll definitely be tuning in to the upcoming UFC 211, though, as there are some good names on the card, like Stipe Miocic, Joanna Jędrzejczyk, and Demian Maia. There are also some folks I like to watch lower on the card, like Jason Knight. I hope he wins his fight, so he gets some time on the microphone. This post is just a bunch of random UFC cards I've picked up recently, if you define recently pretty loosely.

Urijah Faber cards saw a little bit of a spike when he retired a few months ago, but you can get most of them now without spending much. I like this mat relic card from 2011 Topps UFC Finest because it lists the event the mat was used for. I think I may have looked up pictures from WEC 52 at some point to identify where in the mat this piece came from, but that was a long time ago and I'm not doing that right now.

I also got this Urijah Faber Atomic Refractor die-cut card from 2011 Topps UFC Finest, which lists some of his achievements on the back. It's too bad he never was able to get a belt in the UFC, although his understudy, Cody Garbrandt, managed the task against Faber's nemesis, Dominick Cruz. This card is numbered # 62 / 88.

I also have recently picked up a couple of 1st Autographs, including this Jessamyn Duke card from 2014 Topps UFC Champions. Part of the fun of my UFC collection is that I will pick up pretty much anything that is interesting to me, so there is plenty of variety. Autographs tend to be pretty cheap, too, outside of the really big stars.

The second autograph here is a Shayna Baszler signature from 2014 Topps UFC Bloodlines. This one is numbered # 036 / 225. Interestingly, Baszler also appears on a Japanese wrestling card I just picked up. She hasn't fought in the UFC since 2015, and has spent most of the time between then and now working for professional wrestling promotions, although she did have an MMA bout in Japan earlier this year. Her nickname is 'The Queen of Spades,' and this autograph has a Spade doodled alongside her name.

Another UFC collection of mine is low-numbered parallels. I am especially partial to these Gold parallels from 2015 UFC Champions, but I'll take any # / 25 or lower parallels I can find. This Carla Esparza card is numbered # 07 / 25. Her most recent fight was a split decision loss to Randa Markos in February.

Finally, I chased down this 2017 Topps UFC Fire autograph for my Neil Magny collection. Then I ordered a box of UFC Fire and pulled another copy. I guess it could be worse. This one is numbered # 002 / 199. Magny's most recent fight was a unanimous decision victory over Johny Hendricks in December.

Breaking it Down 25: Some UFC Stuff from TeamBreaks.com

On the same night I got all the WWE Undisputed stuff I posted a couple of days ago, I grabbed a couple of fighter spots and a base card spot in some UFC breaks. I am not a huge UFC fan, but I follow some of the big stories and I am always looking for something new to add to my cardboard collections. The site for this breaker is TeamBreaks.com. It appears to be a one-man operation and he focuses mostly on UFC breaks, although he does a smattering of other stuff. I actually participated in one of his other breaks a long time ago, but hadn't really checked back in for a while until now. That card up top is a Francisco Rivera autograph relic card I got from a 2014 Topps UFC Bloodlines break. I got a random fighter slot, so the list was randomized and each slot got four fighter names assigned to them. If hits got pulled for any of those names, you got them. There was also a base card  /inserts slot available for any cards not considered as hits..

His site has a few draws for me. One is that he does cheap breaks. I am not sure how he makes any money, but maybe that's not his overall goal. He breaks stuff in small enough increments that you can get a random fighter spot for a couple of dollars and have a chance at something. I may not hit anything, but that's easier to justify on a $2 fighter slot than it is on a $20-80 team slot on most MBL / NFL / NBA / NHL breaks. At least I get to sit and watch cool cards get opened for half an hour or more. Second is that it seems like there aren't a lot of people busting the stuff he does. I can find a fairly large number of people busting any of the main sports, but I haven't run into a lot of UFC or wrestling breakers. They might be out there somewhere, but I haven't run into them. Third, he does quite a few giveaways and promotions, so even if you don't get a hit you might wind up with something. Fourth, he isn't super-annoying to listen to on his video feeds. My only complaint in that department is that he and / or the chat feed get a little off-color from time to time, so headphones are required when my kids are running around.

The other breaks I got into were all for 2015 Topps UFC Champions. In the bigger 6-box break I got a few fighter slots. My only hit card was this Jessamyn Duke autograph. There might have been more hits to go around, but most of the hits were doubled up across the boxes, so most of the autographs hit in the first half of the break were pulled again in the second half of the break. I've got a couple of other Duke cards, so I guess you can call it a PC now.

I also got this Black parallel of Sara McMann. Most of the parallels in Topps UFC products feature serial numbers with a lot of 8's in them, because UFC fights happen in an octagonal cage. So instead of being numbered out of # / 200, these Black parallels are numbered # / 188. This one is copy # 061 / 188. Some of the rarer parallels are # / 8.

There are also serial-numbered cards with more traditional numbering, like this Jessamyn Duke Gold numbered # 08 / 25. It's probably the best card I got in the break. The card backs are pretty light on statistics, instead usually including a brief write-up of how the fighter's 2014 went. They also include height, weight, training location, weight class, and the fighter's Twitter handle. I would be happier if they included at least win-loss records or titles held or Bowman-like graphics of wins by type or strike percentage or something.

I also had the base card slot from one box of 2015 UFC Champions. I got 170 / 200 base cards toward a complete set, with 7 doubles. That's pretty decent collation. While flipping through the stack I saw something interesting on Stephen Thompson's base card. I cropped the picture down a little on the right for a better look. It's the Blowout Cards store logo! The only online mentions I could find about Blowout sponsoring fighters come from the 2010-2012 time frame, but this picture is from a bout in July of 2015 so they must have continued the practice. The UFC has a (relatively) new sponsorship deal with Reebok now which did away with most / all of the individual fighter sponsors in favor of a large agreement with payouts based on fighter rankings and official merchandise sales. I am not sure when it took effect, though, or whether it covers t-shirts worn after a fight.

I'm not sure where this little foray into MMA cards will take me. I've been digging around on the UFC website a bit lately, learning about the fighters and weight classes and whatnot. I got a free trial to their online streaming service and watched the Fight Night card last night, which had twelve different fights. I don't know a whole lot as far as technical details, but the fights were interesting and it was usually pretty apparent to me who was in control at any given time. There were some pretty dramatic reversals, though, so you couldn't always tell who would win in the end. It just takes one or two good hits or a grappling mistake for things to get turned around. I found it pretty entertaining. The main event between Rose Namajunas and Paige VanZant was pretty epic, but there weren't really any fights that didn't hold my interest except for one that ended within a few seconds due to an accidental eye poke that required medical attention.

One thing that helped keep me engaged in each fight was the UFC Fantasy Pick 'Em game, which has you pick the winner, the round in which the victory was won, and the type of victory. There are different bonus points that can be won, too, like picking an underdog that wins or for picking a title fight correctly. I didn't do too well in the game, but I got 5 / 12 fights right, with 1 bonus for an underdog and 2 perfect picks (getting the round and type of win right in addition to picking the winner).

I've found a few fighters who I might start small PCs for, so we'll see how that goes. There doesn't seem to be a huge market for UFC trading cards, but there must be a few people out there buying this stuff. The speculators come out in droves whenever a big event goes down, and there are a few fighters who seem to be popular no matter what. Combat sports are a different animal than the usual sports that people collect cards from. The major sports leagues all have a pretty consistent schedule, with each team playing a certain amount of games per year against a specific group of opponents. That means that a fan can count on seeing their favorite players / teams a certain number of times in a given year. Fighters, whether in UFC or boxing, don't have that predictability. A fighter might have 5 bouts in a year or they might go many months or more than a year between fights. It is all so political that even a really good fighter might never have a chance at a title belt depending on what the promoters want to schedule. In other sports you know that if you win enough games to win your division you are going to get a shot at a championship in the playoffs. A fighter doesn't get that guarantee, because the promoters are looking to make the most money, not necessarily to give the best fighters a shot at a belt. Winning all your fights doesn't necessarily guarantee a shot at a belt, unless the promoters feel they can sell tickets to that show.

I've been a little hesitant to get into this stuff, in large part because most of the real-life people I know who are fans of MMA are not people I get along with. I don't really want to associate myself with them. What really pulled me into it in the end was the meteoric rise of Ronda Rousey, which kind of spear-headed a public acceptance of the sport. I guess that makes me a bandwagon fan, but if you really stick to a strict definition of bandwagoning there can only be one original fan of anything, and that makes everyone a bandwagoner of one kind or another. I'll stick with it for a while and see where it goes. At the very least it adds a little more variety to my card collection.

2014 Topps UFC Bloodlines Group Break

Late last year I joined a  UFC group break to see if I could add anything interesting to my collection. I don't follow MMA very closely, but usually if there is a big fight I hear about it because I follow a lot of sports blogs and news sites. One of the fighters I got in the break was Cat Zingano, the fighter who got beaten in 14 seconds by Ronda Rousey in UFC 184. I don't see much news about her recently outside of commentary leading up to UFC 190. Allison Glock wrote a pretty good ESPN article about Zingano earlier this year. The Zingano card I got in the break was this relic card with a single-colored red swatch of fabric embedded in it.

The back of the card contains the usual message congratulating the card's owner for obtaining the card. If I remember right, this break featured a box or two each of several different products. This relic card came from 2014 Topps UFC Bloodlines. It is numbered # 012 / 208.

This Jessamyn Duke New Guard card is also from 2014 Topps UFC Bloodlines. Duke had a 3-0 record after her first four fights (one loss was overturned due to illegal moves by the other fighter), but has lost her last three fights, including one about a week ago, to fall to 3-3 in her UFC career.

Also included in the package was a pack of 2014 UFC Champions cards. I don't know most of the UFC fighters, but it was essentially a free chance to open a pack of something new.

These were the only two vertically-oriented cards in the pack. Jacare Souza is 22-3 on his career and according to Wikipedia is ranked #2 in the Middleweight division. Ovince Saint Preux is 18-6 and rated #6 in the Light Heavyweight division.

The horizontal cards feature seven more fighters' individual cards and a Fight Nights Highlights card of the UFC 157 match between Ronda Rousey and Liz Carmouche, which was the first women's fight in UFC MMA history.

Ronda Rousey is in the news right now for her fight tonight against Bethe Correia in UFC 190. She defeated Correia in 34 seconds by knockout, which is kind of notable because 9 of her 12 professional wins so far have come by armbar submissions. I don't know if anyone is going to be able to beat her. Everyone who tries gets embarrassed. You can watch the entirety of her last three fights in just over a minute.

I don't see myself really going out of my way to start an MMA collection, but it was fun to dabble in the cards a little bit.