MMA Style on a Budget

Disclosure

When we lived in Los Angeles, we immersed ourselves in culture, sports and activities. We regularly visited the Rose Bowl Flea Market, found cool novelty shops, hit the beach, had season tickets to the Lakers and XFL football and often day-tripped it to Vegas. We enjoyed the diversity and participating first hand. Yes, that IS a younger me and my oldest daughter alongside Paris Hilton.

Yes, that IS a younger me and my oldest daughter alongside Paris Hilton.Unfortunately, here in Iowa, there are a lot less opportunities. A LOT less. We can get season tickets to minor league sports teams but with a family of four it isn’t as practical or financially reasonable. So we take opportunities as they arise. Shortly after we moved here, I recall being invited to attend a party with my brother. It was a get together to watch a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) title fight for a local fighter. Bettendorf is home to a major MMA fighter and his training facility so it seemed to be a pretty important part of the community culture.

And we were part of it.

When the kids are in bed, we’ll surf the channels looking for something to watch and sometimes find an MMA fight. We don’t care who is on nor do we cheer for one or the other. We simply enjoy the entertainment of watching. While I wasn’t a fan of Jason “Mayhem” Miller – because I thought he seemed arrogant in the ring/octagon/cage, I love watching Bully Beatdown. Sometimes we’ll even let the kids watch that with us but we haven’t seen it on lately so it’s been a while.

Now, you may be asking yourself how extreme we are. Not extreme. We enjoy watching MMA and I’ll gladly carry on a conversation with someone about it. So when I was asked if I would be interested in checking out what Walmart has to offer for MMA apparel, I said sure. I don’t see myself wearing the skulls and whatnot but I do really like the Celtic patterns that are used.

So I headed off (from the comfort of my own desk chair) to make a few purchases from Walmart.com. I figured I would get a shirt for myself and one for my husband. Or two for him if he found two he liked. It was quite a surprise to see the variety of colors and designs available, including big/tall sizes.

The selection was good with a variety of colors and styles to choose from. Some had graphics on both the front and the back while others were only on the front. The only thing I was disappointed with was the fact they don’t offer shirts in women’s sizes. I think they’re really missing out by excluding the demographic that would make their clothes look sexy!

Walmart.com offers the ability to sort by color…

…and provides a zoom/quick look feature to get a better look at the details of the shirt. A pattern at first glance and the design when magnified are often quite different. Not just with this product but with anything. It’s great that this feature is available so customers know exactly (more or less) what they’re getting.

The prices are extremely reasonable (under $10!) for t-shirts and the shipping was only 97¢.

I gave a good look through and found a few shirts that I liked either the color or the design. Unfortunately, when I went to place the order, Walmart.com didn’t allow those items to be shipped to my home. I provided screenshots of the glitched messages in my pictorial story about the experience.

While I want to say it was quite discouraging, a better explanation is that it was extremely annoying to try to make a purchase and the system tell me that it cannot ship to my home. When I attempted to contact Walmart customer service, there wasn’t an interactive system to handle it, I couldn’t locate an 800# and they didn’t return contact me when I sent an email. It was an extremely frustrating experience and it makes me wonder how many people have a similar problem when trying to order this product.

After a few more unsuccessful attempts to purchase something, I went back through the available MMA Elite apparel items and put them ALL of them in my basket. Only one shirt didn’t get a red flag.

That’s the one I ordered. And I have to say that it looks good on me… although it would look better if it was fitted. After all, I’ve finally started losing weight and I want to show off the curves!