Issue 045

January 2009

Things we hear, things we see, things we know.

Wanderlei takes a ‘large’

When we were putting together the photo shoot for this issue’s cover, the plan was always to get Wanderlei looking sharp in a tux. There was just one problem – the Brazilian light heavyweight’s schedule meant it was nearly impossible to pin him down to ask him his size. Our intrepid cameraman Gary, who was filming all of the acceptance speeches, made an educated guess and hired one. The result? A perfect fit!       

The early bird catches the… Spider?  

What is it with Brazilians and crazy schedules? With our guys on the ground in Las Vegas running around during fight week for UFC 91 handing out trophies, one particular award winner was nowhere to be seen. Anderson Silva’s team mate Lyoto Machida is the one known as ‘elusive’, but Silva gave him a run for his money. We finally caught him at 5.30am in the lobby of his hotel, leaving for the airport. Talk about a close call.   

TapouT heart FO

When you’re the owners of a multi-million dollar clothing enterprise like TapouT, the last thing you’d need is more T-shirts, right? Wrong! The TapouT crew were so happy with their award (and so taken with our T-shirts) they asked for a bunch to be sent to their offices!  

FO readers have eagle eyes

We had a raft of emails sent to us by readers when Fighters Only popped up on Dana White’s video blog prior to UFC 91. The benefits of free publicity aside, there was one small problem – the UFC president accidentally let slip that the both he and UFC had won awards when we were keeping the results under wraps for a few more weeks! To date the video has had more than 100,000 views.    

...