Introducing Project Endless Knockout

[chadsexington]

This past March, I decided to move a different direction with my collecting habits. I decided to stop looking so much for hockey and nonsport and focus more on UFC and MMA in general. At the March show, I quickly decided to take on up to 4 sets from the amazing looking UFC Knockout, but the farther I went into tracking cards down, I realized my eye and my attention were falling mainly toward the base auto set numbered out of 188. Nothing against the other sets...I just found myself drawn to finding those cards more than the others. For reference, here's what the original set looks like:



I got to the point where I was grabbing what I didn't have left and right, and so I decided one day to look into the actual checklist for this thing and see how far away I was from putting it all together...

...which was when I discovered a huge flaw in it.

You see, there were originally 50 signers for the set. Of those 50, I could only confirm 23 of those existed. The missing fighters were everybody from Cro Cop, to Sexyama to James Toney??? Meanwhile, I found at least 9 autos in my hands that weren't part of the original checklist, and could confirm that at least 3 more I'd seen but didn't have existed but weren't on the checklist.

Great. So what's a man to do?

Take matters into his own hands of course.

I currently sit 9 autos away from what I can confirm exists (4 of which are redemptions where only Chuck Liddell and GSP are live) and once I'm done, I'm just going to continue on with custom form Knockout autos for whomever around here signs in the future that I'd like to add. My only requirement for my custom set, however, is that if they are in the real set, I buy the actual auto and not cheap out. We met Cigano that weekend, but I wouldn't have grabbed his graph since he's in the real set (and incidentally, one of the fighters I'm missing in the real set.)

With perfect timing, the UFC happened to be in town 2 weeks ago, along with the annual MMA Expo. PERFECT time to kickstart the project. Unfortunately, I didn't count on meeting most of the other fighters in person (or hanging out at Krzysztof Soszynski's afterparty) otherwise, I could've had pretty much everybody on the 131 card from Einemo to Omigawa had I made the cards...and Tim Credeur could've signed a Lyle Beerbohm auto since I thought it was him till a couple buddies corrected me.

Anyway, story time.

Call this the first round. I'm removing the word "Topps" from the authentic autograph bit for future prints because well...it isn't a Topps auto, and will be brightening the background in the future as well to a better gradient. I just did what I could do on a couple days notice of this all coming together. You'll notice the Photoshop work is a bit evident with some of these. My girlfriend is a Photoshop whiz, but I made her life pretty hard, and now, thanks to the handiwork of Richard (sbangayan86,) I have a clean template going forward for the new customs. He even removed the word "UFC" from the top of one version so I could go in and add Strikeforce or WEC into the mix in the future.

Everybody you see below was either not in the original set at all, or was on the checklist but didn't show up in the final product.

Let's start with the festivities before the event. On Thursday, Mark Hominick was signing at the local Athlete's World and I stood in line to grab his auto quickly before I had to go elsewhere. He was a nice guy and had actually seen the Knockout auto set before, so his first question when he saw the card was "Whoa, where did you get this? Was this supposed to be in the set or something?" and I told him about the project, which he thought was neat. We discussed his infamous hematoma and off I went with the first start. He only had black sharpies on him I should add.

The next day, the dudes texted me about being in line for the Jake Shields and Matt Serra signing downtown. Unfortunately, I had to work. Fortunately they let me cut in line when I got there. Unfortunately, they only had silver sharpies onsite. Great guys, but I learned my lesson here...blue sharpie or bust, so I made note to carry blue Sharpies with me.



So come fight Saturday, and I caught wind during the Hominick signing that Rory McDonald was signing at the same place Saturday. So this time, remembering to bring a blue sharpie, I got...



WOW...so if that didn't convince me to use Blue Sharpie for everybody going forward, I don't know what would.

We waited for Brendan Schaub downtown before the event at the UFC trailer, but unfortunately, he left just as we got into the autograph area, and since I didn't have anything for Duane Ludwig (more on him later,) we left and sat down...

...and later chilled with KSos. Again, as I mentioned, I wasn't prepared for any of the UFC 131 fighters themselves save for 3 (2 of which were at the Expo the next day) so I don't have KSos here yet.

Onto Expo Sunday...was a bit of a blur. I met a lot of fighters, a few of which were happy there were long time MMA fight fans out there. Carlos Newton (who I couldn't find a good picture of, but gave me a mailing address because he wanted to sign a custom once he saw what I had for Stefan Struve) and I had a good chat about some of the old PRIDE stuff, and sanctioning and licensing trouble in BC. Stefan Struve and I talked about his visiting Vancouver for the first time, and the UFC card sets. He's not a collector...had never seen his cards before, and was less than impressed when I gave him a base card from Title Shot, because (as he put it) "They used a really bad picture of me man." Here are a few of the autos from the Expo:



There's a photo of me and Matyushenko wearing Janitor caps together and me holding a broom I haven't pulled off the memory stick yet. I guess nobody had done something so outrageously stupid before that he couldn't wipe the smile off his face and asked somebody to take a picture for him of us too. Sean Pierson was being largely ignored while people lined up for Kenny Florian's autograph, so we stood around and chatted a bunch while people passed him by, including discussing the benefits and downfalls of being a Canadian fighter fighting domestically and internationally, especially financially. He's an accountant by day, so there was a bit of a financial lesson involved too. Interesting dude.

Jason MacDonald...dude was on-site with surprise guest Duane "Bang" Ludwig, who flipped his **** when he saw the MacDonald custom, and asked if I had one of him (which I didn't, because I admit I didn't think he was going to be in town, and he wasn't one of the people as being in town.) I didn't unfortunately, but as it turns out...Bang is a lifelong card collector, and he and his brother have been collecting things their whole lives. He said he even has a BGS 10 of his K1 base card. So while Bang and I are nerding out discussing the finer points of Beckett grading, and talking to him about sheet cut grading (he was asking me about whether I knew why so many older cards were suddenly popping up with perfect grades,) self-professed non collector MacDonald and a friend of mine were slowly falling asleep on their feet listening to us and the awaiting people were growing annoyed, especially when Bang took a step back to keep talking to me. Anyway, one business card exchange later and I told him I'd be in touch. Note to Topps: This is guy that should be in your sets. No redemption waits...no screwing around. You'll get results with him because he's of that collector mentality.

The MacDonald is also a bad picture...after Laura finished making the MacDonald, I found actual UFC photos, but I felt bad asking her to change it when she'd spent hours working with a bunch of these already, so I left it.

So the last couple individual scans...one was Kenny Florian who graciously agreed to sign 2...one with a personalized message...



His lineup was busy, so next time I meet him, I might ask him to follow up to sign under the Bruins heading, and maybe he was put "SCF Champions 2011" now that it's all said and done. :(

Last guy was an absolute riot. If you've never had the opportunity to meet Shonie Carter as I did the first time at the Expo...this guy is an absolute riot. You see all the pictures of him online wearing all kinds of crazy garb in weird poses. Having spent a bit of time with him at the Expo before he was mobbed, I can safely say...that's Shonie Carter for you. He had his own booth at the Expo and spent more time outside the booth than in it, wandering around taking pictures, signing autographs, babysitting kids, talking pro wrestling, talking MMA, talking smack...this guy was a walking series of one-liners.

Anyway, when I asked him to sign a card for me, his eyes grew to twice their normal size and he goes in his drawn out tone..."IS DAT DA OFFISHAL SHONIE CARTER CARD?" and I go "Um...I guess now it is?" and he lets out the best "DAMN" since Ron Simmons. We talked about a bunch more, but I don't want to bore you guys with more details...so here's one of my favorites of the weekend, albeit with a terrible picture (he asked about the picture and I said it was the only one I could find where he wasn't wearing a gold speedo :) )


So that's the story so far...I've got mailing info for Sam Stout, Carlos Newton and Duane Ludwig for the future, and these 4 sitting around already made...



I think this'll be more fun than chasing stuff I'm not really interested in, and will continue to keep this going as long as I possibly can. This is the first (and probably only large scale) custom project I'll embark on as well.



If you made it this far, thanks for coming along for the ride.

[le_buffalo_bill]

Awesome work...That's a great idea you got. Please keep us ( or at least me) posted on how your project grow.

[afl5013]

That is awesome! Keep updating this site with your new additions.

[chadsexington]

Thanks guys...I just found the TTM Database here, and it's good to see so much success with MMA fighters. I just might start working on things TTM too since everybody seems to be getting things back.

[ChargerChris]

This is an awesome thread and an awesome project. I'm definitely going to follow it.

[windmortal]

Great stuff my man! Very innovative ... Keep us all posted please!

[CUTLETT]

You da' man! Awesome thread! Thanks for sharing! Keep it going!

[chadsexington]

Update: The mail strike nearly killed all momentum I had doing this, so I buckled down for a while and worked on the actual Knockout /188 set. I now have the entire set in hand or in the mail, and so it's just TTMs and customs from here on out.

One of the Hobby Insider members graciously created a template for me to play around with, and it's made things much easier, and it made putting this next one together pretty simple too.

Some buddies and I were in Vegas last week and 2 of us attended the Superior Cage Combat 2 weigh-ins, where I had a card ready and waiting for a local boy (Vancouver born, though he lives in Vegas now) ...so the latest addition to the project is...



John Alessio...the man who was the MMA's Natural before Randy Couture

I only took one copy with me though and he said he wished I had an extra for him. I offered to send the templates or send a few copies, so you might see a few more floating out there from him.

I'll probably start popping these up on Twitter soon too, using the hashtag #endlessknockout

[Trazmcnaz]

Very nice work man. Really glad to see collectors taking the initiative like this, would make for some awesome PC sets. Keep it up!!

[MattyJames]

Those look really nice. Congrats!!!!