UFC Fight Night in Newark

A few months ago, a UFC Fight Night was announced for Prudential Center in Newark.  Seeing as Josh and I LOVE UFC, and had never been to a live event before, we absolutely had to get tickets.  

So, come the 18th, we were super excited and decided to go to Newark a couple hours early to grab some lunch.  The only problem was, the prelim fights actually started at 4pm, which just seemed super early considering the main card wouldn't be over until 11ish.  Regardless, we headed in about 1 and grabbed a DELICIOUS lunch at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que right outside Prudential Center.  So good!

After lunch, and still having a couple hours to blow, we decided to take a little walk around Newark.  This happened to be the hottest day we have had so far, about 75F, so it was too nice a day to waste inside a dark bar or something.  This area of Newark is quite interesting.  It goes from beautiful park and safe streets, to super Ghetto in about 1/2 a block.  No offense to Newark residents, but its true.   But anyway, I have been a lot worse areas and the people seemed quite friendly.  Here are some pictures of the nicer things we saw that day, like I said, it really is gorgeous.  Did you know that Newark was actually one of the first cities in America and was home to many very important historical events? Check some of the history out here and here.

Newark's historical Paramount Theater

Military Park

The New Jersey PAC.  There are some great concerts, plays and other events here.

The Scales of Justice at the courthouse.

We headed back to Prudential to a bar called "Taste Venue" for a drink and then we went the square outside Prudential where there were some beer carts and some tables set up so we enjoyed a drink in the sun (and got sunburnt!)
Finally at 4 we decided towhead into Prudential.  There were some great fights on the undercard, but if there wouldn't have been I would suggest not going quite so early.

We were sitting right above the Fox Sports broadcast booth with a few UFC fighters.  Chris Weidman, one of our favorites was on for a while.  Our section kept calling him name and finally he looked up and waved to us haha.

Dana White, founder of UFC came up for a few minutes too.

Finally it was time for the main event.  By this time I had developed a pretty bad migraine (nothing new) so I was really trying hard to enjoy everything but it was getting difficult!  The main event was Lyota Machida vs. Luke Rockhold.  Machida was the heavy favorite, but anyone that watched it knows it was a quick fight!

We had a great time, and actually a pretty awesome day!  Some advice to any UFC newbies, check the schedule and don't go until there is a fight you want to see because otherwise it is a very long day!  Also contrary to what you would think, there are pretty good views from most seats.