Folks,

I'm settled in here at the Sovereign Bank Arena to witness Bodog Fight's first live show in the U.S.  I'm really here to follow in the latest exploits of Baltimore's rising MMA star Binky Jones, but a quick look at the fight card indicates that it should be a good one.  There are some familiar names on the card.

Here's the fight card (though I can't confirm that this is the order of the fights):

Heavyweight: Mark Burch vs. Yoshiki Takahashi

Lightweight: Eben Oroz vs. David Love

Middleweight: Amar Suloev vs. Chael Sonnen

Lightweight: Binky Jones vs. Nick Agallar

Heavyweight: Branden Lee Hinkle vs. Roman Zentsov

Lightweight: Jorge Masvidal vs. Yves Edwards

Women's Title: Laura D'Auguste vs. Tara Larosa

Middleweight Title: Trevor Prangley vs. Yuki Kondo

Welterweight Title: Eddie Alvarez vs. Matt Lee

For those of you who don't know, Bodog Fight was started by Bodog gambling founder Calvin Ayre.  The fights will be fought in a ring (unlike the cage of UFC or EliteXC).  And from what I can see from the information handed out to the media, the program guide and the setup here, the production level for the event should be quite good.  In addition, there are TV camera crews filming the event for a taped show.

According to what I've found online, the arena holds somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 seats.  Fans are beginning to enter the arena with about 30 minutes before the start of the event.

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As an interesting note, I was eating dinner at a nearby establishment and I'm pretty sure that NYBA Phil Baroni, his fiancée, and someone else were eating diagonally from me.  It hasn't been a good past few weeks for Baroni.  He lost to Frank Shamrock at the June 22 Strikeforce-EliteXC event and then word came that Baroni had failed his drug test for that match. 

And I think I may have looked over at his table one too many times because on my way out he gave me a deathly staredown.  I certainly didn't want to be on the wrong end of him taking out a month's worth frustrations.

And, if it wasn't Baroni and his fiancée, then it was two Trentonites who had me fooled.  I'll be curious to see if Baroni is in attendance at this event.