My buddy had somehow gotten me into this and all I knew was, I wanted out.

Standing across the ring was none other than Houston Alexander. You know, the guy who destroyed Keith Jardine in a hale of strikes at UFC 71 last year. Usually thickly muscled, though, “The Assassin” appeared quite out of shape, with a potbelly jiggling and hanging over his muay Thai shorts.

“Just hit him first,” my friend (and trainer?) offered just before the opening bell.

Sounded like a gameplan, I guess. Who knows? My scrawny ass certainly wasn’t used to gameplanning for how to stop a very large man from murdering me with his bare hands.

Alexander, it seemed, wasn’t concerned with the strategy of his 135-pound challenger anyway. He charged across the cage with harmful intentions, arriving before me in a flash despite his unexpected beer-gut baggage. I noticed, though, that his hands were down and his chin was right there. So, I loaded up and hit him in the chin with a right cross.

The next moments were a blur, but soon, I was awkwardly shaking my opponent’s hand and consoling him after his improbable loss. Everyone was looking at me weird, like I didn’t belong. Joe Rogan didn’t even want to interview me.

That’s about the time I woke up. Of course, it was all a dream.

I’m no fighter. I’m no psychologist, either, so I don’t know what any of it meant.

But here’s my guess: I had this DREAM not long after landing a spot on the editorial staff at Fightline. The imagined bout against Alexander and the laughable result was likely a subconscious debate about my journalistic “gameness” for entering the world of legitimate MMA writing.

In my first offering for Fightline, let me be very up front: I don’t claim to be an expert insider. (Let’s recap: I’m not a fighter, a psychologist or a MMA expert.) I’ll be coming at you from a fan’s perspective, first and foremost. I don’t have a lengthy list of contacts and I can’t come close to cataloguing the brief, explosive history of this awesome sport. I’m just a writer who became a MMA fanatic and was awarded this opportunity to share my thoughts (and my work will normally appear on Mondays).

I’ll leave it up to the readers to tell me if I belong -- and I’m sure you will.

But, if my subconscious has any clue, I must at least have a chance. Otherwise, what was Alexander’s gut all about?