Ok so this is a great story.  I was down in Virginia for the Issue #1 release party and somehow Bas Rutten came up in conversation.  I had seen him before, but I am not really that into MMA so I really didn’t know who he was.  These guys were showing me his youtube videos and we were dying.  This dude is a character.  So one of my friends was like “I can get this dudes phone number, he would be great for the Soapbox section. I agreed, but after some reasearch and realizing how famous and legendary this guy was I didn’t think there was a way in hell to get in contact with him.  Three days later I get a text message from an undisclosed source with Bas Ruttens cell phone number….I was like dope.  I called my boy and was like “so who is going to make the introduction.  Does this dude know I am going to be calling?”  My boy was like “na dude this is on some cold call shit, no one is supposed to have this dudes cell phone”  I thought FUCK THIS.  This guy is an Animal, he is going to fucking kill me if I call him unannounced on his cell phone no less.  If it was an office number that would be cool, but I could see this dude being like “where did you get my fucking number?….who the fuck are you?…..what made you think it was ok to call my cell?  But lets be honest, I had to give it a shot, it was too good to pass up.  So I call this dude and I have to

admit I was shaking, I really didn’t want to piss this guy off for obvious reasons.  So Bas picks up, I state my name, that I publish a magazine and he’s like “This sounds great, lets do this baby!” Just like that.  He acted as if we knew eachother for 10 years. I sent him a magazine priority mail and called him two days later.  He picks up and he answers “JOEY what up my friend?  This magazine is beautiful…the paper….the paper is amazing.”  He kept talking about the paper quality….he was like lets do this, I have story’s for days.  So we did The Soapbox.

I didn’t want to get some generic stock photo of him so I had to find a photographer in Cali.  By a stroke of luck, I end up linking up with Estevan Oriol a couple of days later.  He was another one, he acted like we were boys for years….super cool guy and he was down with the magazine and doing stuff with us.  A few days later Estevan drove up to Bas Ruttens dojo and they took photos for The Art of Storytelling issue#2 Soapbox… We will have totally original photos of Bas for issue #2 and an original never before told story as well.  I love when things come out of left field like this, it is probably the most exciting part of having a magazine.

Check out these Bas Videos.