Moosin's Announcing Team

Broadcasting the Moosin: God of Martial Arts pay-per-view Friday May 21, 2010 in Worcester, Mass., was the best experience I’ve had in my broadcasting career thus far!

We had a super hot crowd that was especially vocal for the Polish guys. Mariusz Pudzianowski had a spectacular Polish rap entrance that brought the house down.

We had a great time calling the fights. Tom Megalis was the party host and also handled the post-fight interviews. Tom is a professional performer and studied very hard. He has a bright future as an MMA announcer.

Bas Rutten, an all-time legend of the sport, described the technical aspects of the game. The fans gave him the star treatment and even asked for photos with him while we were on the air!

I researched the fighters for the other announcers and TV crew, and called the play-by-play. I also conducted the “talking head” interviews that were shown before the fights.

Moosin put on a great show, with the ladies’ fight really standing out as a classic. Tara LaRosa and Roxie Modafferi had an exciting brawl and showed each other great respect after the fight, which Roxie won.

Tim Sylvia won the main event over Pudzianowski, which gave his career a boost. Pudzianowski learned what he needs to do if he wants to make a serious run at an MMA career. Increasing his stamina is No. 1 on his to-do list.

A lot of people are bagging on Pudzian for tapping out to strikes – and Bas said that’s never a good thing for a fighter to do – but Pudzian knew he was out of gas.

Sylvia was watching the fight on YouTube the next morning, and I was sitting right next to him when he heard me pick Pudzian to win.

Uh-oh.

“Don’t you know ANYTHING about this sport?” he asked.

As I explained on the air, Pudzian looked me right in the eye and PROMISED that he would win the fight. Considering that he was a five-time World’s Strongest Man, it made me think that he could be one of those “once in a generation” athletes who could produce a Joe Namath moment.

It didn’t happen, but I think it’s better to make a bold prediction on the air rather than to play it safe.

I also have to give props to our backstage interviewer, Stephanie Kula. She was rounding up interview subjects on the fly, and I thought she did a fine job.

The four of us got along great and I hope we get a lot more opportunities to work together.

Bas, Tom, and I even sang along to some of the entrance music, most notably “Superbad” by James Brown (Forrest Petz) and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” (Tara LaRosa).

I think that was a great opportunity to inject some entertainment value into the show, so it wasn’t all “super-serious” for three solid hours.

Many thanks to Corey Fischer for enjoying my work on Fightfest and giving me this PPV opportunity, as well as all of the Moosin officials. Let’s do it again soon!