Postal Day 3

The concluding part of my Postal blog:

"Postal" Day 3: Saturday, 23rd September 2006

Since nothing was planned for Saturday till the pick-up at 5:30pm to go to the fight, Andrew and I decide to do some sight-seeing around Vancouver. Feeling guilty for being less-than-supportive the previous evening, we leave a note with the hotel concierge for Jeff, giving him Andrew's mobile number and telling him to call us if he wants to hang out later. (Due to a chronic misspelling of his last name, it later turned out that he never got the message, which didn't help with the guilt.)

On the way down to the waterfront, we spy a load of police cars and news vans, and are curiously wandering when we notice that the cars say “NYPD” on the side, leading us to deduce that this is actually part of a film set. Our suspicions are confirmed when we spy a sign reading “Fantastic Four 2” (which has to be a working title, right?) but we're blasé about movie sets now so we carry on on our quest. One SeaBus and then a normal bus later, and we're halfway up a mountain; a cable car takes us to the very top of Grouse Mountain, where we watch a world-famous lumber-jack show starring a guy called, against all probability, “Stirling Hart”, before communing with nature in the woods and looking at a sleepy wolf. The views out over Vancouver are stunning, but we head back early because, let's face it, the fight is the whole reason we're there.

The thing is, before I got on the plane to Canada, I was expecting to watch Uwe Boll beat up his critics. Unquestionably, I didn't think anyone else stood much of a chance. (Except maybe, er, Chance.) Having spent a couple of days hanging out with them, I still mostly expected they'd get their asses kicked, only now it felt sort of mean. I liked these guys, I didn't want to see them get hurt; I'd never seen a boxing match before in my life, but had an inkling it wasn't gonna be pretty.

The time immediately before the fight seemed a little disorganised, or maybe just manic. Having been shown to our ringside seats probably an hour before anything was scheduled to start, we got restless and wandered off to the casino to speak to everyone backstage. I managed to collar Uwe Boll for a quick interview, and I have to say (this ain't gonna be a popular opinion) I like him. He comes across as fun, friendly and charismatic, trading jibes with the challengers as they got their pictures taken by the official photographer immediately behind us. He also stuck around to finish answering our questions even after he'd been told, twice, that GoldenPalace.com needed him up on stage to be interviewed, so kudos to him for that!

After everyone had been ushered away, we took our seats again; only a couple of feet away was a table where Kristanna Loken, Zack Ward, Andrew Jackson and Ralf Moeller were sitting, cheering on Boll. Well, except that there were ten (yeah, TEN) displays of martial arts from some kids' gym first, most of which involved small children waving around knives in very close proximity to one another, and making all of us in the front row excessively nervous.

The fights themselves, you can watch on YouTube. To cut a very long story short, everyone got their asses kicked. Lowtax kept up his comedy schtick till the bitter end, despite some vicious blows to the head; Jeff stood up remarkably well, considering, even making it to a second round; Chris Alexander's fake blood stunt was beyond brilliant; and Chance, well, I can only figure Boll thought Chance might pose him some genuine risk, and decided to put him down as quickly as possible, because that match was harsh.

The weirdest part, for me, was that the Boll fight wasn't the headline act: immediately afterwards, some kickboxers (who, incidentally, look like a Mr Gay Universe line-up) get in the ring, and I promptly flee back to the casino. Chris has donned the costume he entered the ring wearing (but had to remove for the actual fight) – batwings and a silver Mexican wrestling mask – and I can see Lowtax getting interviewed; Chance is around, but I can't spot Jeff anywhere. I eventually ask Trevor, who points to a waist-height screen and goes “He's behind that, I think.”

“Holy shit.” I'm pretty sure I actually just said that straight to his face, which is another black mark on my conscience, but – the boy did not look well. He's sitting on the floor, with a paramedic beside him helping him breathe through an oxygen mask, and a rubbish bin in front of him in case he threw up again. (I'm kind of glad I missed the throwing up, to be honest.) The punches Boll was throwing had looked pretty harsh at the time, but Jeff had just kept on getting up and carrying on, and I'd assumed he was okay (after all, everyone else seemed alright). See, I'm not a totally inhumane monster; if my mother's reading this, I'm sure she'll be relieved to know that no end of horror movies can fully desensitise me to real life violence.

Okay, enough with the fluffy bunnies – there's an after-party at the nightclub adjacent to the fight location, but it sounded incredibly shit, so we pile into the van back to the hotel. And then promptly pile back out again, having seen Jeff off to his room, to find a bar in which to toast Chris Alexander.

(Eventually, we end up in a bar where the waitress shifts people out of the way so all ten of us can sit in a booth; we had to abandon an earlier, half-empty bar due to Chris's overly loud “This is shit!” declaration the moment we walked in. Good stuff.)

"Postal": Postscript

And, that's pretty much it. Chance and Chris went out for breakfast with Uwe Boll the next day, while Lowtax posted a comment on SomethingAwful about how much he hates the guy and Jeff, well, when I called him at 10:30am, he was planning on getting a massage in his hotel room. The whole thing was probably the weirdest experience I've ever had in my life, so, in a ridiculously diva-esque style, let me just conclude by saying that everyone involved is a good egg in my book, and entirely undeserving of getting their asses kicked. Cheers, guys; I owe you all a drink sometime. And hey – at least no-one got AIDS.