On a Brighter Note:

Dayne had a fight Saturday night, June 5th. This was his first fight back after begin put on medical suspension for his injuries in WA. So I was worried sick about it. He was slated to fight a kid with a very tough reputation both on the ground at jiu jitsu and as a standing fighter. I had a sick feeling, but prayed about it and realized that the sick feeling was just leftover angst from what happened in WA. 

We weren't sure Dayne was even going to be able to fight, since the stupid sports commission demanded his CAT scans and then demanded that they be reviewed by a neurologist, and THEN the very day before the fight, they decided that they needed the physician's records regarding the initial head trauma. Dayne, Adam, Johnnie Riche, the promoter and Dr. Graham were all racing around trying to get things faxed here and there and WA were being A-holes saying they couldn't fax medical records blah blah blah, but it finally got done and he got cleared at 4 PM the day before the fight. Talk about stress!

Mason done gradiated the 5th grade and Karla had a party that I was hoping I'd be able to make it to, but Adam (who I've decided isn't the devil after all - it was Griff) had 10 shirts printed for Dayne with the Riven logo on the front and "Dangerous" Dayne Aristizabal - in Loving Memory of Tyrel Long on the back. So I had to run to Orem and pick them up and then race back home to distribute the shirts amongst family and friends who were attending the fight, then shower and race up to the fights since it was GA and we wanted good seats. (For you old folks who don't know what GA is, it's General Admission basically meaning whoever gets there first gets the best seats.) PS - I ordered 20 more shirts because EVERYONE wanted one and Dayne gave 3 away right off the bat so we only had 7 for our family. Ruth, Matt, Lainie, and I got one, and then we let the other people who were riding with us duke it out for the rest. Ruth ended up giving her shirt to Ty's friend, Trevor because he didn't get one and was horribly disappointed. I thought that was very nice of her and Trevor was THRILLED. 

Here are some picture of the fight: 

Dayne lands a hard right

 Wow! Look at Dayne's Definition. He is RIPPED!

Some Ground n Pound

The Ref Stopping the Fight

The 2 Guys Dayne Hired for Coaching Him,

Left: Jason Mertlich & Right: Brandon Guzzo

Dayne's stand-up has improved SO much!

The fam-damily (please note the scary "people from the hills" behind us. They eyed Karlee up one side & down the other.

 I can't say I blame them - She IS adorable!

LMAO at Peanut hugging Ruth to death

 The Gangstas - Dayne's diehard fans

We Did Poo Poo Lips and Westside in Honor of Tyrel

So that was our fun evening out. A good time was had by all...except maybe the guy Dayne fought who looked pretty banged up. I felt bad for him and think they should have stopped the fight about 30 seconds before they did. Dayne was able to dedicate the fight to Tyrel like he wanted to so I was happy about that. It was very important to him, since Ty had so much faith in him as a fighter.

Here's a link to some video footage from the fight that was on KSL news Sportbeat - Drag the slider bar a little more than halfway to get to Dayne's fight.

http://pandora.bonnint.net/video/video/slc/video_archive/2010_06_05_sports_beat.mp4

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=294&sid=11091403

 Dayne appears in all his awesome glory at approx. 1:27 into the show. His standup is to die for ... and Lucas won't be fighting him again, I'm willing to bet! 

Pre-fight predictions were right on the money:

55 Lightweight WINNER: ARISTIZABAL by TKO Round 1

Lucas Montoya (Labato MMA) vs Dayne Aristizabal (The Academy)....Expect an amazing display of jiu jitsu or a first round KO! These two warriors have risen through the ranks faster than any other fighter out there. There is no doubt that the winner of this fight will be a top contender in the lightweight division.

An old post since apparently some of you were unaware of what happened in WA

Dayne, ready for his WA fight...he thinks.

So, it's been quite awhile since I wrote. Not too surprising. I'm a lazy ne'er do well. I guess the big news from the last, almost 2 months, is that Dayne got hurt in a fight in Tacoma, WA and spent 2 days in ICU there. He was cutting weight and had to fly all day and make weigh ins in WA, so he cut weight the night before his flight, which was 2 days before the fight, a day before weigh ins. That is dangerous, but he felt like he didn't have a choice because he didn't have a facility to cut weight in WA. So he'd been without food or water for 24 hours by the time he weighed in, plus traveled all day. Then he got sick from eating again after going so long without food or water and puked all night. The next day, he said he felt really weird, and spacey but figured he'd be OK once he got in the ring. When he was warming up, he said he knew he was in trouble and had zero energy and thought his only chance was to finish the guy ASAP. So he went in, took the guy down repeatedly and put hold after hold on him but could never lock it on tight enough to make the guy (Sterling Ford) tap, because he was too weak.

Dayne and Eddie Pelcynzski - pre fight 

He was beat up pretty bad and his eye was cut and blacked in the first round. He'd broken his nose pretty badly in training about two weeks before the fight, then gotten kneed in the face accidentally by a teammate (Brock Jardine) about 3 days before the WA fight, so we figured he'd get his nose rebroken anyway. Something was weird with the way the cage opened and the fighters only have 1 minute between rounds. Griff couldn't get the cage open to go help Dayne and no one would help him. Dayne didn't even have a stool to sit on for that time. Finally, Griff got into the ring and spent less than 10 seconds with Dayne before the next round started. So Dayne didn't get a drink or to sit down or anything, which I think it complete bullshit.

Round 2 started and Dayne locked on a triangle and put everything he had into it but the guy wouldn't tap. Dayne said he heard the guy's leg pop bad though, like he fucked it up really bad, but it gassed Dayne so bad that he had no energy left at all and couldn't even raise his hand. So the stupid ref just sat there and let Ford stay in full mount and punch the shit out of Dayne who couldn't even raise a hand to defend himself. He FINALLY stopped the fight but it was too late. Dayne couldn't even stand up. He rolled over onto his stomach but couldn't get his hands and knees under him to support him, so he was just lying there in a pool of his own blood and the Dr and Griff were in there shouting at him to get up and he couldn't. Finally the Dr. ran to call the ambulance crew in, and Griff literally dragged Dayne to his feet and out of the cage. Dayne couldn't get his legs to work and Griff was dragging him along like a doll. And THIS part enrages me, the crowd was laughing. I wish I knew the name and address of every one of those motherfuckers who laughed and I would go to their houses and beat the living shit out of them with a baseball bat before I killed them. If they had kids, I would tie them up and make them watch while I beat their kids to death and laughed BEFORE I killed them.

The ambulance crew assessed Dayne and he said the Dr was yelling "This one's gotta go NOW!" and he kept mumbling "I don't want to go anywhere. I just want to lay here and rest" and finally one of the crew, an older woman, said "I know you don't want to go honey, but you have to." So he let them put him onto the stretcher. Then, since he was shirtless and soaking wet with his own blood (he didn't sweat at all) they covered him up in blankets. He said he felt like he was on fire and kept throwing the blankets off until they finally strapped them down.They started sticking IVs into him and he was puking blood all the way to the hospital and he could hear them on the radio telling the hospital they had a kid with severe head trauma and probable internal bleeding so prepare for that.

Mr. Not-Feeling-So-Hot

Daynie Boy in ICU 

They got him to the hospital (they wouldn't let Griff ride along) and to the emergency room and stuck even more IVs in. He was already in a neck brace as SOP and they whipped him right in for a total body CAT scan. He said he kept going to sleep because they gave him morphine right when he got there and people kept waking him up because he had a concussion, so that he happily slept through the CAT scan. The CAT scan didn't show them anything really, as it became apparent later, but they did ascertain that he wasn't bleeding internally. They told him no bones were broken (not true as it turns out) but that his neck vertebra were displaced, so he had to keep wearing the neck brace. His blood tests came back showing that he had severe acidosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acidosis and acute renal failure, wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_renal_failure so they started pumping him full of saline and presumably something else too, to rehydrate him at a cellular level. They let him call me as they were moving him to ICU. They wanted to notify me, but he told them I would freak out and to let him make the call. I, of course, was freaking out anyway. He was embarrassed (and still is) that he lost an easy fight and everyone laughed at him. So they put in a catheter at some point and he wasn't producing urine because he was so dehydrated. His blood pressure and resting heart rate were completely off the charts too.

Icky eye - After sleeping with an ice pack on it all night.

The reason Dayne looks so greasy is because they put vaseline on his face before the fight and never wiped it off the entire time he was in the hospital. WTF???

I called my family and Hernan to let them know and texted Micah, then posted a prayer request on my Facebook page. Tim Staley saw it there and called my mom who assumed that I'd called him and told him the whole story. He immediately started working on getting Dayne released and life flighted home. He didn't ask my permission and, in fact, told me to quit calling and "bothering" Dayne, he needed his rest! What a pompous dick he is. So he called me and told me something new every few hours. He apparently had told them he was Dayne's Uncle Tim and talked to the Dr. treating Dayne and all his nurses and was on first name basis with them all. On the other side of the coin, Griff, not knowing Tim was doing all this, was trying to get their team Dr. to get them to release Dayne so they could put him in the hospital here and keep an eye on him, since he and Eddie had to leave Dayne in WA and fly home the morning after the fight. He was worried sick about Dayne, but no one from Throwdown EVER contacted me which I think is extremely negligent on their part.

Micah was freaking out and kept calling me and Dayne. Dayne's fight was on a Saturday night and Micah is a pastor now, so he held a prayer circle for Dayne Sunday morning at his church.He told me that he and Rachel had flight vouchers and I could use them to fly out to stay with Dayne, or if not, he wanted to fly out and stay with him if that was OK. Tim also was threatening to fly out to stay with Dayne. I told Micah it was OK if he went, but I thought Dayne would be home soon and was working toward that end rather than having us all fly out, and told Tim (at Dayne's behest) NOT to fly out to see Dayne, but to work on getting him home. I was wondering, at this point, how come the hospital would release information to anyone who called, then later found out that they all claimed to be relatives. Tim was Dayne's uncle, Micah was Dayne's brother, Ruth was his mom, etc. LOL.

Anyway, they decided, despite everyone's protestations, that they needed to keep Dayne another night since he still wasn't producing nearly enough urine for the amount of saline he'd been given (6 bags in one day), so they moved him to a regular room at least and let him take the neck brace off, finally. The radiologist had finally taken a look at his CAT scan and decided that the "misplaced" discs in Dayne's neck were actually just scoliosis. Dayne said he was really relieved to get that off, because it was hideously uncomfortable. He also said that, after they moved him to a regular room, he kept telling the nurse he had to pee and she kept telling him it was just the catheter balloon pressing on his bladder. He bitched so much that she finally took it out and he peed gallons. Apparently the catheter was plugged and no one noticed. Dumb asses. He said there was about an inch of sand like stuff in the bottom of whatever he had to pee into so they could measure his output and he asked what it was. The nurse said that it was sediment that collected when his kidneys shut down. Ouch! He said that the IV in one of his arms was as big around as a coffee straw and when the nurse pulled it out, she said "I have NEVER seen an IV that big. They must have wanted to get as much fluid into ASAP!

The Human Pincushion

They released him from the hospital Monday morning and Tim had arranged a shuttle to pick him up from the hospital and take him to the airport, supposedly all paid for but they charged him $40 bucks. Then he had a looooong flight (12 hour) with a 4 hour layover in Phoenix. I was mad that Tim had taken it upon himself to arrange all that since I would have bought him a straight flight home and he would have been here in 2.5 hours, but I was also sort of relieved because I wouldn't have known about arranging a shuttle and he'd have had to take a cab. On the other hand, who the hell does Tim think he is? Dayne's phone was dead, and he didn't call me before he left the hospital, so I was completely in the dark about whether or not he'd made his flight, been released or anything else. I called his dad who met him at the Phoenix airport and stayed with him while he was there. I was planning to pick him up in SLC, but he called from his dad's phone when he got to AZ there and told me that Griff was going to pick him up because he'd left his truck at Griff's house. So I asked if he was OK to drive and he snorted and said "Duh" in typical Dayne fashion. So, to make a long story short, he finally got home. I was SO relieved to have him home.

A side note: Dayne was so hideously smashed up that when he was walking around the halls in the hospital pushing his IV cart, because he's a pacer by nature and can't stand to sit or lay still for long, people kept gasping in horror at the sight of him and one man said "Oh my Lord!" and turned quickly away. The same thing happened on the shuttle and at the airport, so the first thing Dayne did when he'd checked in was march to a store and by the biggest aviator sunglasses he could find. LOL.

I called Dr. Todd Cook, the surgeon who'd taken care of Tyrel when Ty's face got crushed and the one Dayne went to when the whole left side of his face got smashed by Razor in February, and made an appt. on Wednesday because he looked so bad. They got him right in and did another CAT scan and this time determined that both of his eye sockets were cracked and his nose was broken into 9 separate pieces which had collapsed his nasal passages to the point where surgery would be necessary to repair them. They scheduled him into surgery the next day, Thursday, October 8th. I stayed home from work so I could be with him and Tyrel came along to keep me company.

The same day surgery took all freaking day. We had to be there at 9 AM and they finally took him into surgery around 11:30 AM. He was in there for about an hour, then in recovery for what seemed like forever. Brenda Llywellyn's son, Nate, in law is good friends with Ty, and Ty called him to see if he'd come and give Dayne a blessing before surgery. He did and afterward he said that sometimes, when he gives blessings, he sees images. With Dayne he saw, very clearly, that his head was surrounded in a pane of glass. Like stained glass, pieced together, only clear. I asked what it meant and he said he didn't know. I think it means Dayne's in a physically fragile state right now. Anyway, we finally made it home around 3 pm. He wasn't supposed to sleep flat or be alone for 24 hours, so he stayed here. He wouldn't take his pain pills and said it was just annoying because he had a bad headache from the anesthesia. He had packing put up both nostrils which had to stay in place until Monday then 12th. He was VERY annoyed by that.

 Still kinda out of it.

Aw...for sweet. Ty kept wiping Dayne's eyes gently and then just impulsively kissed his forehead.

 I wanna go home!

The day he got the packing taken out, (Monday, the 12th) with typical Dayne-luck, he decided to go down to the lake with Nicole Grace (his roommate) and one of her friends. They wanted him to do a back flip, which he has done at least a thousand times. Somehow he managed to land flat on his face. His teeth went through his lip and he chipped a tooth AND rebroke his newly rebuilt nose. I called Dr. Cook's office first thing Tuesday morning and they told me to tell Dayne to not eat or drink anything and get back in there ASAP. He went in, assuming, as I did, that they were going to have to do surgery again, but Dr. Cook just shoved the bones back into place from the outside and told Dayne to wear his splint for another week. Dayne couldn't because he'd thrown it away, but he was careful to sleep on his back. His nose looks OK now. Not perfect like it looked after surgery, but not horribly deformed either.

Since then, he's smacked it around quite a bit. Thursday, this week, he was playing with one of those heavy medicine balls at the gym and it somehow bounced up and hit him right in the nose and lips. WTF? Those things NEVER bounce. I swear something is out to get him. The good news is that he finally saw Griff & Adam for what they are and is utterly disgusted with them and Throwdown. Also, he is on indefinite medical suspension with the sports commission, so he can't fight in the Throwdown show on November 20th. Griff, the dick, is still advertising that Dayne will be fighting to sell tickets, but he knew when he made the "official card" public, that Dayne was medically unable to fight. What a douche he is and he NEVER said one word about hoping Dayne got better soon or anything on Facebook, although a TON of other people asked for updates constantly.

Ok, now to go back, back, back in time. On the 18th of Sept, Dayne and Ricky Lundell drove up to Idaho to a Pedro Sauer seminar and tested for their next belt. Dayne should be a black belt by now, but he hasn't been able to test because Pedro moved to VA to train the FBI, so he tested for and got his brown belt. YAY! Next is black. The reason Dayne heard about the opportunity is that the guy who lives across the street, just East of us, saw Dayne outside mowing the lawn a couple of months ago and came over and Dayne said he noticed someone hanging over the fence watching him. He thought "Oh great. Wonder what the dick neighbor wants to bitch about." The guy asked "Is your name Dayne?" Dayne said "Yeah" and he (Gavin) said "As in Daynegerous?" Dayne said "Yeah, that's me." The guy leapt over the fence and shook Dayne's hand vigorously and said "I am a HUGE fan! I've watched you for years, from way before you were doing MMA." Turns out the guy is an avid Jiu Jitsu lover and used to train. He absolutely adores Dayne and thinks he's the best in the state. So he has a friend who owns a studio in Idaho and tipped Dayne off about the seminar. Then he also has a friend who is a distributor for Pepsi for UT, ID, WY, and one of the other adjacent states. He talked to him about sponsoring Dayne and the guy talked to Pepsi and they wanted a CD of Dayne's fight pictures, so hopefully that will go through. It's looking good so far.

Dayne getting his new belt signed by Pedro

Pedro & Dayne: the proud owner of a brown belt!

Dayne isn't going to tell Throwdown about the sponsorship either, since he won't see the money if he does. He hates them now. He hired Brandon Guzzo as a takedown coach after his loss to Razor and, after the WA experience, he decided that Throwdown does NOT have his back and asked Guzzo if he'd consider becoming his official trainer because it was a conflict of interest for Griff to be Dayne's manager AND trainer. Guzzo has taken to it like a fish to water. I'm SO grateful that Dayne's insane loyalty to Throwdown finally ended. He said he was also talking to Josh Burkman who is a UFC fighter who told Dayne that a good trainer would NEVER have let him go into a fight after cutting weight and then puking all night, unless he did IV rehydration first. Dayne asked what that was and, apparently there is a special "fighter" IV solution called "The Volcano Pack" that UFC and WEC fighters use to rehydrate after cutting weight. It has saline and B vitamins, so that they are hydrated on a cellular level and won't risk having what happened to Dayne happen to them. Burkman also told Dayne that Throwdown was a one man show and it was going under because of Adam's dishonesty and his huge ego. He advised Dayne to get the hell out of there and that it was a horrible conflict of interest for his promoter, his manager, and his trainers to all be the same people. I'm glad that he laid down the smack to Dayne and Dayne was jaded enough by them just leaving him in ICU in WA and waltzing off home to listen. It's all a big blessing in disguise. Ask me that once I start getting the bills for his hospitalization and surgery and I'll deny it!!!

Dayne's Fight on June 5th

Dayne got his medical suspension (from OCTOBER!!!! ) cleared this morning, so he will be fighting Lucas Montoya on June 5th. Lucas is a black belt in jiu jitsu and a good boxer, so this will be a real fight for Dayne, as he usually can best anyone at Jits. He is better than Montoya, but Montoya doesn't know that, so I'm hoping Lucas'll be cocky, thinking he's black and Dayne's only a brown belt. Dayne should have been black a looong time ago, but Pedro moved to VA. so he has trouble getting belt tested. Either way, please pray for Dayne. He is dedicating this fight to Tyrel and having Ty's name put on his walk out shirt and shorts. Ty had so much faith in Dayne as a fighter that he had Dayne autograph a Throwdown hat so that he would have it when Dayne got famous.

I usually confine myself to praying that the Lord's will be done, and that Dayne just not be injured in his fight, but this time I REALLY want him to win, because I know that if he loses, he will feel like he let down Tyrel's memory and I don't want him to suffer that loss twice. Once was enough and after his brutal loss in WA, he deserves a good, quick win and an opportunity to give a shout out to Ty in his post fight interview. Please join me in my prayers for Dayne.

I have tried to talk Dayne into saying, when they touch gloves, "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!" from the Princess Bride, but of course he won't. It's funny right? Plus it's throw Montoya off his game because he'd be thinking "WTF????" LOL.

On an entirely different note, Nicole is being induced tomorrow at 6 AM. I was going to take the day off, but after hearing all the people she has who are intending to be there, I decided to just head over after lunch. I figure they won't let us all in the delivery room anyway. Jeez Louise. I wish I didn't have to go, because I just don't have the time to miss from work, but I know I'll live to regret that bump under her dress if I don't go.

Mason has actually done gradiated the 5th grade! Ha Ha, bad Beverly Hillbillies joke. But seriously, he graduated from High School and I am SO proud of him and of Karla. He made a valiant effort and Karla made an equally (if not greater effort) to get his butt there. So congratulations are in order. CONGRATULATIONS MASON!!!!

So please keep Dayne in your prayers, at least for a safe fight, but if you can squeeze it in, beg God to let him win this one for Tysie. It would make him so happy.