My Last Night on the Ice

I first slipped on skates at the age of four in the neighbourhood rink down the street from my house. Some would say that I got off to a rocky relationship with my one true love. I quit Learn to Skate at four and a half, complaining about the pointlessness of skating in circles for an hour a week, and wondering why anyone would possibly freeze water and try to stand up on what appeared to be winter boots with knives on the bottom. At the age of six, my uncle came to my house Christmas morning carrying a hockey net and I distinctly remember exclaiming to myself, “Why would Zio get me that? I don’t even like hockey!”

Then one Saturday evening, with no homework and nothing to do before my bedtime, I sat down and watched a Toronto Maple Leafs game with my father, my uncle and my grandfather. Three hours later, I realized I had not moved since the drop of the puck and was amazed that it was possible to do the things on ice that I had just seen these players do. That summer, I stumbled upon my father’s old Easton Wayne Gretzky hockey stick and a beaten up puck in the garage and found myself enthralled with the sound of rubber hitting wood. I would stickhandle alone in my driveway with my mother looking on, unable to lift the puck or even realize that it was left handed when I was a natural righty.

The following October, I was on the ice for my first organized hockey game. After a year of falling constantly and cursing myself for not remaining in that atrocious learn to skate program, I moved to the Downsview Beavers organization and scored my first goal the next season. I immediately fell in love with the rush of a screaming crowd (or just the players’ parents), clapping and yelling in celebration, and discovered my first true passion in life. From then on, hockey became my focus. I practiced alone day and night, in the driveway, in the basement, even in class with an imaginary stick. I grew older, had my first penalty shot (where I hit the post) and accidentally put the puck in my own net (both incidents were a week apart). I scored goals to tie games with time running out, goals in playoff overtime games, and lost countless heartbreakers. As I hit my teenage years, hitting was introduced, and I suddenly grew afraid to play the game I loved. Small and skinny, I was only able to survive through the protection of bigger teammates and the advice of my father, who had missed possibly two games in my entire career. Remaining in the Downsview organization, I chose to head to an all boys catholic school solely for the opportunity to play on their hockey team. After three years of being either too young or too old to play for the age group the school selected to use each season, I made the varsity squad in my senior year. Our home rink was Downsview arena, and it was quite a sight to see the rafters full with screaming students for our afternoon home games, and theme music from Metallica cueing our entrance onto the ice.

By this time, I had turned 17 years old, and my minor hockey days were winding down. After a fantastic final season playing for three teams, spring rolled around and I could see the end. After losing in the championship with all three of my teams, I was invited to a coach’s skate to celebrate a fun season and to take the ice one more time with many who had seen me play since I was a child, along with my two best friends who I had played with for years. The game was to take place, fittingly enough, at Downsview. After two hours of clowning around, trick moves and fake fights, players began to trail off the ice and head home. As I looked for my father in the slowly emptying arena, I realized he must have thought the skate ended an hour later than it did. Finally, I was left with only one other player on the ice, who turned to me and said, “I’m beat man, let’s go home.” I told him that I didn’t really want to take off the skates just yet, and he bid me goodnight and shut the door off the ice.

I stood at centre ice and looked around me. I looked to the stands that had been filled with so many important people in my life through the years. I looked to the roof of the rink, from which had hung several flags during an international tournament that I had played in a few years before, in front of people I had never met and in games where my team came out to the Hockey Night in Canada theme song to represent the nation. I looked to the corners where numerous fights had taken place with the variety of characters that I had shared the ice with. I looked at the net where I had scored one of my first goals ever. Then, I grabbed a puck and came in the same way that I had done as an eight-year old when I scored that goal, and shot it in the exact same spot. I circled again and rushed to the other end, reliving a game tying goal against Norway that had gotten my team to the medal round of that international tournament when I swore I could feel the rink shake. Finally, I came down the left wing on the other side where I had scored the last big goal of my career, a high school playoff goal where I had knocked the goalie’s water bottle off the top of the net with a wrist shot and celebrated by the glass with my fellow students reaching over and slapping my helmet and shoulder pads in celebration. I shot the puck at the exact same spot and smiled to myself, picking up the puck and skating back to center. As I looked up, I noticed my father standing at the exit beside the two benches, watching as he had since I could barely stand on my own two skates. He looked over at me, aware of what the game had meant to the two of us over the decade that I had played.

“It’s time to go son,” he smiled.

“Yeah Dad, I know,” I replied. As I scooped up the puck from my blade to my glove, I took one last look at the building which had left me with so many memories, had defined my childhood.

“I know.”

I skated to the exit door that he had opened for me, and lifted my feet off the ice surface. I walked silently to the dressing room, my father quietly following behind me.

UFC Veterans Jackson, Evans take their fight to ....Twitter?

It’s a battle that has been years in the making. The mixed martial arts community wanted it, pleaded for it, and finally, on May 29 at UFC 114, they will get it.

Top UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) Light-Heavyweight fighters Quentin ‘Rampage’ Jackson and ‘Sugar’ Rashad Evans have never been the best of friends. Expected to fight each other in early 2009, injuries and the birth of Evans’ second child put things on hold. Then, after being chosen as opposing coaches on the UFC’s reality show, “The Ultimate Fighter” (which almost always means a scheduled fight between the coaches after the show’s conclusion), Rampage retired from fighting to begin his acting career. These delays did absolutely nothing to halt the verbal sparring between the two, which had began in earnest in March of 2009 when Evans interrupted a Rampage interview after UFC 96. After 45 seconds of trash-talking that had to be partly bleeped out for television, Rampage declared that there was “going to be some black on black crime!” threw his microphone down in disgust and walked out of the ring. Things got no better during the filming of the reality show, with each episode featuring at least one face to face showdown between the two willing combatants. Yet after Rampage surprisingly withdrew from the UFC, many were positive that the fight would never happen.

Fast forward to December 2009. After the filming of his first movie (a redone, "The A-Team" with Rampage as B.A Baracus) had wrapped up, Jackson announced that he would be returning to the UFC, and that he planned to fight Evans. The fight was confirmed for UFC 114 in Las Vegas (after originally being set for UFC113), and both fighters set off to begin their training camps. Fans immediately rejoiced in this announcement, ecstatic that the rivalry and mutual dislike between the two fighters was finally set to come to a head. Many undoubtedly circled May 29, 2010 on their calendars, with hardcore fans aware that there might be some fireworks at the weigh – ins the night before the actual event, when the two would again come face to face. Other than a conference call between fighters and UFC’s usual countdown show where both would be interviewed a few weeks before the event, most people believed that it was finally time for the two to do their talking in the ring. Those people forgot that both fighters were on Twitter.

The online trash talking began in earnest in early April, with Rampage seeming to be the aggressor. With Tweets to Evans saying things like, “@sugarrashadevans Bring your pillow cause you going to sleep boy!! Dem chin stands ain't gonna help!!” and my favourite of the bunch, “@sugarrashadevans mama so fat he bought her a UFC shirt & thought it stood for ugly fat chick!!” it was obvious that things were getting ugly at a rapid rate. Evans, the one in showdowns who appears to try to act a little classier (not saying much when compared to Rampage), would try to fire back with facts, stating, “@Rampage4real I got ko'd (knocked out) once bruh! U've been ko'd 3x's! I'm not a mathematician but I'm almost certain 3 is more than 1.. Get it 2getha!” (Adam note: I’m aware these dudes don’t follow CP Style).

Now, for a guy new to Twitter such as myself, I was actually surprised to see this kind of thing taking place. I had grown up in a world where social media didn’t really exist on any grand scale until I was halfway through university: the only chirping I heard between fighters when I was a boxing fan growing up was on scheduled shows such as HBO’s 24/7. Even now, with Twitter, Facebook, and other options available to fighters everywhere, I still expected some of the toughest men on the planet to leave the posturing to scheduled promotions and the cage. In retrospect, believing this meant completely disregarding the personalities of both Rampage and Evans. Both are showmen, prone to allowing their cockiness to get in the way of their skill: giving athletes such as these new outlets to reach a vast audience and expecting it to have no effect? Do I not go to school for PR? How did I not see this coming? It is questionable whether both fighters have engaged in this online war simply due to their dislike for each other: rather, I believe options such as Twitter allow these men to grow their own brands and build excitement for the fight, something which results in increased Pay–Per-View buys, and ultimately, leverage in negotiations for further contracts. Don't get me wrong. I have no doubt that these two have great disdain for one another: but I do not believe it is the underlying reason for this social media war.

Perhaps this is the problem with taking every Twitter/Facebook/Myspace (yeah right) post that your favourite celebrity makes with complete seriousness. While social networking enables us to allow the public into our personal lives, it also affords companies, public figures and even those just seeking personal gain a chance to further promote themselves. Sometimes, particularly in the case of Rampage and Evans, all of these entities are rolled into one. You’ve heard it a hundred times before, and frankly I’m sick of hearing it: the world is changing. Technology and social networking are playing an ever-growing role in our lives. Yes, they are, for better and for worse. The downside of situations such as a Twitter war between two of your favourite athletes is that you’re never sure what is legitimate trash talking and what is carefully calculated marketing. The upside is that it’s funny as hell to read, and actually gets you excited to watch them square off in person. I don’t know about you, but I’m okay with taking the trade-off.