Staff Bios - Bob Countryman
Robert Countryman is a published author and poet, born and raised in Iowa. He spends his active time with his only son and expanding his writing library, and his down time playing entirely too many video games. In his own words: "I've been a fan of professional wrestling for as long as I can remember. My grandfather and father took me to a WWF event when I was young and there wasn't any turning back after that. We didn't always have cable, but I kept up as best I could through renting any video cassettes that came to my small town rental place. When I had exhausted their library, I tried out something called the UFC. Wrestling will always have a place in my heart and I still enjoy catching a few PPVs, watching an event on TV if I happen to catch it, and I really love getting together with friends to watch whatever, but my true love is MMA."
"The UFC was one of those weird things that kept popping up in my life. My little rental place didn't ever have more than two or three UFC tapes (I guess people kept stealing them, so the manager stopped ordering them), plus they were simply hard to get ahold of in the early nineties, so I didn't get back into the UFC until around 2000. It has been my drug of choice since then."
"Now I find myself to be a jaded old fan who remembers the good ol' days of Evan Tanner, Jens Pulver, Chuck Liddell, Tito Ortiz and pre-motorcycle wreck Frank Mir. I reminisce of the days when Randy Couture came out of retirement to bash Tim Sylvia and sit on his back for a couple rounds to win a decision. When I criticize the UFC (which is more often than not), it's because I consider those to be the heyday of MMA and I want them to return to that. The rules seemed to mean something then. I fear that the quest for money has become more important than the sport for the big wigs."
You can find Bob on Twitter @imonlyi and Google+ via gplus.to/imonlyi.