Spoiler Alert: but if you haven’t read Watchmen, why the heck not? I mean, speaking as someone who just read it for the first time herself, after years of being lectured about it, I can tell you honestly that they were all right, everyone who said these words to me.

The Watchmen trailer is beautiful, a comic fan’s wet dream—it’s lush and dark and brooding and scary, and the world is perfect. It gives away a little too much, but that’s not my biggest complaint.

It rubbed me the wrong way only for one reason—the ages are all wrong.
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May 4, 2007. Friday morning. event day. I awake and miss the team breakfast at IHOP, but I am not worried about it because I slept in, and let me tell you, for someone who has severe sleeping disorders, sleeping in was great. No, it was better then great, it can only be described by using a word that has not yet been created, so I will create it now. Sleeping in was Supawesomlypendous.

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With just one round, the “face of MMA” changed.

I joked before the fight with the crew of fighters and friends that I sat at a sports bar with that Chuck was going to lose because he had been on the cover of ESPN the Magazine.  Everyone else at the table agreed that Rampage was going to win it, people more  knowledgeable than I. The only Liddell stalwart, besides the rest of the crowd at the bar that had never heard of Quinton Jackson, was a college wrestler who had just lost $20 betting against Karo Parisyan and was now lamenting that Chuck was going to lose because he had bet on him.

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So most of you probably don’t know that my fiance is currently a competitive fighter. It’s one of the main reasons that I’m the addict that I am, and I thought it might be interesting to share his inside view on the craziness that goes on before, during, and after a mixed martial arts fight. Sure, you could watch The Ultimate Fighter, but why stop there? So this is the first half of his fight diary.

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I came late to being a fight fan. I grew up with a vague awareness of boxing champs as they floated through the collective consciousness–Marvelous Marvin Hagler was huge, and a local boy, when I was a kid in Massachusetts. I was never terribly interested. I watched football and hockey and defended the hockey guys against the girls who complained that they had no teeth and broken noses.

In college, a hockey-loving boyfriend turned me on to the Ultimate Fighting Championship. We would drink red wine in his French Quarter apartment and watch early UFC tapes, rooting for tattooed brawlers like Tank Abbott. Some of those old UFC fights were little more than hockey fights, sans skates.

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Greetings and welcome to the new ShotgunReviews.com. Since 1999, we’ve done our best to give you worthwhile (and often funny) reviews and columns, and it’s time to shake off the rust and do it a little differently. We’ve kicked around a few ideas regarding how we’d do this new thing, and we hope you like what you see.

The new design comes to us from Barb Hallock, a student of mine with the appropriate attitude for this place (that is, bad). The more bloggish format puts us more on par with the current landscape. After all, we’ve been doing this almost eight full years. It was time for a big change. I think that you’ll agree that the new format, with a huge list of categories and easy searching, is a good one.

As part of that big change, we’ve brought in an influx of new talent from a variety of places. The entirety of our Best Shots team, responsible for the Best Shots column that runs every Monday at Newsarama.com, is now operating here in several capacities. You’ll also meet several talented young writers, including Barb herself, who will be tackling a variety of topics.

However, if you’re one of the rare folks that has read us since 1999, don’t get too worried. Shawn Delaney will still grace us with terrific music reviews, as will Jonathan Birdsong and the Lyrical Lounge crew. The Russ is back on wrestling coverage in full force. L.I. Rapkin’s already kicking in some culture. Eric Barker’s already opened the film vaults. And they aren’t the only familiar faces lurking around.

In the next few days and weeks, you’ll see the roster expand a little more and you’ll see some new recurring columns and features that we hope will become favorites. If you want to check out the old stuff, the old site currently still exists in its full glory under the archive button. If you want to talk about any of the stuff, old or new, visit our newly established forums.

So there’s my big speech. Enjoy yourselves, express yourselves, and invite friends. ShotgunReviews.com never went away, but we are most certainly back. Thanks for your time.