Amanda Beard can't get enough of UFC

	Amanda Beard is on the UFC bandwagon. John Parra/WireImage.com

By Amanda Beard

[Editors Note: When SI.com's Arash Markazi sat down with Amanda Beard for lunch near her home in Venice Beach last week he decided to throw her a curve ball. Instead of talking to her about her highly publicized Playboy cover he handed her his laptop and asked her to type her own sports story. What follows is her first foray into sports journalism.]

I didn't think much of it at the time. I had just finished a long workout and was relaxing on my couch when I turned on the TV. I started flipping the channels and I remember being so tired that I just wanted to find something cool to watch and just chill.

And then it happened.

I switched to an advertisement for a UFC pay-per-view featuring Royce Gracie. I didn't know anything about it but it looked cool so I said, 'Why not?' and ordered it. I was instantly hooked. I couldn't stop watching it. I immediately became a fan and I wanted to learn everything about it. It's been more than a year now and I'm still learning.

Luckily, I found a boyfriend who liked it as well, so I didn't have to be that girl sitting in her house watching it by herself. We watch it all the time now. We buy all these DVDs of shows I've never seen and watch them on trips. Some programs air clips of the best knockouts or the best submissions, but I really love watching the old UFC shows, like UFC 1-5. They didn't have rounds or the weight class that they have now. Fighters would go in the ring for 30 minutes straight and just go for it. On average, though, most of the fights would only take two and half minutes. Anyone who's just now getting into UFC should really check out some of those early shows. They're classic. My boyfriend and I watch them on the plane together and the stewardesses are always giving us dirty looks because we can't keep quite.