It's Time!

May 20, 2013
Longtime Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) announcer Buffer, who opens bouts with his trade-mark shout "It's Time!" entertains with this breezy insider memoir about one of the world's fastest-growing sports. After describing his early life, including various adolescent street fights, Buffer details the entrepreneurial spirit that brought him to the fledgling UFC and sports entertainment in general. This leads to one of the most fascinating and serendipitous parts of the memoir: Buffer's discovery that World Championship Wrestling announcer Michael Buffer is actually his stepbrother. The well-known sloganâ"Let's get ready to rumble!"âBuffer eventually helps his stepbrother trademark. The rest of the book rehashes highlights from Buffer's nearly two-decade-long career, a series of bouts and fights that will thrill what Buffer knows to be his core audience: "the ideal viewing marketâeighteen- to thirty-four-year olds who the heart and soul of the UFC." He offers readers various inspira-tional "Bufferisms" ("No. 4â'BSC: Balls, Skill, Confidence.' . . . You can do anything if you have these three things.") Buffer often displays a humor that sets the book apart from conventional fan-targeted sports memoir, such as his admission that he "would never want to be involved in a bathroom fight. Too much porcelain." Agent: Yfat Reiss Gendell, Foundry Literary + Media

April 15, 2013
The veteran Ultimate Fighting Championship announcer shares his life story. The central portion of Buffer's memoir chronicles his recent knee injury (sustained, ironically, while announcing at a UFC event) and his commitment to making a complete recovery. However, it is his account of life outside of the UFC that provides key insights into the very full personality behind the "Voice of the Octagon." Growing up in Malibu with a hard-charging father, a former Marine turned novelist, Buffer had an adventure-filled childhood. He achieved financial success working at a series of telemarketing companies and went on to do well in the high-stakes world of competitive poker. After discovering as an adult that boxing announcer Michael Buffer was his long-lost brother, Bruce formed a business partnership with his famous sibling and was involved in the lucrative decision to trademark Michael's catchphrase, "Let's get ready to rumble!" Their relationship sparked Bruce's desire to become an announcer himself for the then-new sport of mixed martial arts, which has gained significant popularity in recent years. Interspersed throughout the book are "Bufferisms" drawn from the lessons he learned on his tumultuous life's journey; they offer inspirational, though often pedantic, words of wisdom about how to achieve success in business and personal relations. Of course, Buffer also includes plenty of behind-the-scenes stories about partying and fighting alongside some of the biggest names in MMA, including BJ Penn, Chuck Liddell, Randy Couture and Tito Ortiz. Outsized personalities from Hollywood and the world of competitive poker make cameo appearances as well. An amalgam of entertaining vignettes written in an informal, rambling style.

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