You wanna know why there aren’t more people involved in the legislative process? It’s boring. Really boring.

After waking up at an obscene hour to talk about Indy.com with a room full of public relations professionals at the Indiana History Center, I rushed to the Statehouse to make it to a Senate Pensions & Labor committee hearing to determine whether or not the State Senate would hear a bill on the statewide regulation of mixed martial arts during the 2009 legislative session.

I walked through the door a few minutes after the 9 a.m. start time and found a place to stand in the cramped room. The clock struck 10 and I was still standing, still waiting, only now I was sweating from the heat generated by the forty-odd bodies filling the room. I and a handful of MMA partisans stood listening to the committee weigh the merits of passing various bills along to the state Senate; pensions, payroll, motions to suspend rules followed by motions to amend bills followed by motions on the bills themselves. By 11 a.m. I found a seat, though by that time I was jealous of the people who rolled in two hours late and missed exactly nothing.

One of those people was “The Ultimate Fighter” season six cast member John Kolosci. He looked familiar but different enough from when he was on the show that I didn’t recognize him at the time. Weird.

After a three-hour wait, the committee got around to discussing Senate Bill 160. If you want to find out what happened next, read about it here – http://www.indy.com/posts/mma-s-wild-west-gets-new-sheriff-in-town.

Update: sorry, links aren’t working so you gotta deal with ugly URLs. I’ll learn this internet one day soon!