GIVING BACK TO THOSE WHO GAVE SO MUCH
You never really know what you are going to get when you sponsor a fighter. You watch tape of the fighter, read interviews. You talk to his or her agent a few times, haggle over the price of sponsorship, if you’re lucky you get to talk to the fighter once or twice. Fight day comes, the fighter steps in the cage and that’s that. From the minute we started talking with Dale Hartt it was different, in fact it didn’t start off as a sponsorship op at all. He wanted to collect t-shirts from as many clothing companies as he could so he could give them away to the soldiers stationed on Ft. Bragg that would be attending the fights and who were in the Warrior Transition Center on base. He got in contact with us. Not his, (admittedly) extremely cool agent, him. One thing led to another and he was the guy to carry the Ranger Up standard into battle when the UFC came to Ft. Bragg.
As the fights got closer, he stayed in touch, and about two weeks before the fights, he asked if
I’d like to join him when he visited the troops at the Warrior Transition Center. It was an easy
“Hell yeah man!” type answer. Being a combat vet myself, I have friends who have been in places like that. I know guys that didn’t come all the way home, some who died, and some who will greatly benefit from the generosity of the UFC, it’s fighters, and it’s fans. I figured we’d go the day of weigh-ins or something like that, a group of people, a couple of PR people, the typical thing when VIPs come to an Army base.
“Great buddy!” Dale told me. “We’re going Friday.” As in two days after the show, no major press. Just Dale, me, the shirts we had, and a case of books my buddy Tucker Max gave us to hand out.
I picked Dale up at 0730 EST, 0430 Vegas time. “You know where we are going, man?” I asked him.
“Uhh,” Dale said with a sheepish smile. “The solider center.”
“You know how to get there?”
“Nah, buddy.” Dale told me, the smile only getting bigger. “We’ll find it.”
Walking down toward the front desk of the Airborne Inn we ran into two guys. I don’t know if Dale noticed, but you could tell they’d been wounded overseas. One had a limp and scars on the side of his face. The other had a couple of scars in the throat area that suggested, to me at least, that he’d had a rather emergency procedure.
“Hey, buddy,” Dale called out to the guys in an easy friendly manner. “You know how to get to the Warrior Transition Center?”
“Yeah man,” the one with the scars on his throat told him and proceeded to give us directions.
“Thanks, buddy (Dale calls everyone buddy, all the time).”
“Hey, aren’t you one of the UFC fighters?” The other kid asked him.
“Yep,” Dale told him. “I fought Cory Hill the other night.”
“I thought so! Awesome fight! How is he?” The kid asked. It takes a unique person to both love the combat of a UFC event enough to say “awesome fight” and still ask how the other combatant is and genuinely care. Ladies and gentlemen, those are the people protecting the United States today.
“The UFC told me he’s going to be laid up for awhile, but should recover completely,” Dale told him.
“Oh, hey guys,” The kid with the scars on his neck told us as we were turning to go. “Make sure you park in the back and then take the elevator to the fifth floor. Parking can be tricky over there.”
We got to the center on time, parked without a problem, went up to the fifth floor and found out that our liaison was downstairs at the front of the center waiting for us. Apparently, our intel was so good it foiled the welcoming committee.
The plan had started off as us eating breakfast with some troops before everything kicked off. The Army, as it’s known to do, had scheduled a formation at the same time as breakfast, so we had a chance to eat with Tony, who was the event planner for the center and escort for the day. An easy going vet who had retired from the service almost a year ago, he told us about some of the struggles that the wounded soldiers coming home are facing; everything from posttraumatic stress disorder, to traumatic brain injury, to any number of nasty things that happen when bullets fly and explosions ring out.
“I have to warn you, some of these people, they have a very hard time,” Tony told us. “Some can’t be in crowds, some can’t stand very well, some you just never know what is going to trigger a bad memory for them. But they are all very glad you came Dale.”
When we got up to where the signing was happening, there was already a line of about 40 or so soldiers; we’d only brought about 50 or so shirts. I inquired about the numbers to Martha, one of the workers in the center.
“Oh we have a full battalion here. We have over 700 soldiers in the unit.”
An hour or so into the autograph signing, I was the t-shirt guy without any t-shirts, and Dale was without anything to sign.
“Hey, can I get on your computer?” Dale asked one of the workers.
“Sure.” With that, Dale loaded up some old MMA photographs.
“It cool if I print this off?” He asked. The faces of the entire staff lit up.
“SURE!”
With that, Dale Ranger’ed Up, covered the t-shirt guy without any t-shirts, and kept signing autographs. Actually, I take that back, it’s really not fair to him. He didn’t just sign autographs; he did much more than that. He hung out with the troops. He would spend five or ten minutes talking to a single wounded warrior or a small group of them. He asked how long they’d been there, what happened, how they were doing. He took an interest in each and every person that came up to the table on Friday, never having anything less than a smile on his face when they first showed up. The staff had to practically drag him out of the room to eat lunch. A quick bite to eat and he was right back at the table, hanging with the troops. The only time he ever said no to a picture or an autograph was when someone brought the picture from Fight! up for him to sign, the one that shows Cory Hill’s mangled leg.
“Sorry, I can’t do it,” Dale told the solider. “I’ll sign one of these,” he said pointing to the picture he’d printed up. “But signing that wouldn’t be right. It’d be bad Karma,” he said politely, but firmly.
I was a little surprised, and very impressed. I’ve met a couple of fighters since I started working for Ranger Up. I don’t know many that would have refused to sign something that instantly recognizable and interest generating for the fighter like that. It was one of the classiest things I’ve ever seen in the realm of mixed martial arts.
Dale hung out with the troops all day, literally. From 8 a.m. to almost 4 p.m., he was there. Doing everything with a smile on his face, and making friends the whole time. The soldiers adored him, the staff loved him, and when Dale reads this he’s probably going to call me and tell me I didn’t need to write it. He didn’t do it for press, or so people would find out about what a good guy he really is. He did it because he cares. The man genuinely cares about the welfare of our nations wounded warriors.
“Man, when I found out that the UFC was having this show, I called them up and told them, ‘I’ll have anyone, anyone. I just want to be a part of this card.’” He told me and the soldiers that were around him. “You’ve given so much,” he told the troops, “I’m honored to be able to give something back.”
