Singapore exists solely to make us believe the rest of the world is real. That’s something Jean Baudrillard would write instead of just saying Singapore is unbelievable. Before I hopped on my eighteen-hour flight, I though this place was overrun with guys in military outfits, caning everyone in the street. On the immigration form, there’s a giant red warning with the words ‘Death to all drug traffickers‘. Needless to say, I immediately double-checked every compartment of my luggage. After perspiring for what felt like hours in immigration, I finally was official a legal visitor of Singapore. It was around 5:45 am when I stepped in the cab to trek across downtown Singapore. The sun was slowly emerging off the horizon so the gargantuan buildings that surrounded the streets of Singapore took on this extremely colorful purple gradient. It was as if my life was heavily concentrated with ‘awesome’, and if I dipped my fingers out of the window, I could literally taste it — so I did, and the taxi driver thought I was a complete nutcase.
After a few minutes, I finally arrived at my hotel just in time to throw my bags in my room, change into my gear and get ready for my first experience at Evolve MMA. Back in 2009, I wrote an article about this place which is deemed ‘Disneyland for MMA’. Calling it a fight mecca is an understanding. Evolve MMA has the highest concentration of champions in any other gym on the planet. I knew about this place years ago, but to think I would finally step foot in this facility was just mind shattering. Armed with a small receipt with ’26 China Street’ written on the back in blue ink, I had all the instructions I needed to arrive at my final destination. My cab driver was equivalent to the Asian version of Penn Jillette. I told him where I was going, then he began to serenade me with and endless string of incredibly racist jokes, for every nationality in Singapore. He then began to point out places in Singapore where ‘all the women’ are, something that is apparently highly common Singaporean taxi-driver culture.
