Kit Cope - UFC Fighter / Local

Kit Cope is an American Muay Thai kickboxer and mixed martial artist who competes in the Featherweight, Lightweight, and Welterweight divisions. A four-time professional Muay Thai World Champion, Cope also fought in the K-1, Ultimate Fighting Championship and World Extreme Cagefighting promotions.

 

What's your favorite activity off the strip?

Everybody knows where the Strip is, now off the Strip, there's still a ton to do. There's hiking at Red Rock, water sports at Lake Mead. You can actually get in a gunfight, there's a place called Las Vegas Gunfights and it's like a supervised legal gunfight with simunitions, pretty awesome. Can't do that elsewhere. And then there's over 50 golf courses. If you dig that, this is the place and our public courses are a lot nicer than most private courses. It's pretty rad.

 

What's your favorite activity on the strip?

All the shows, every awesome show that was ever created. Cirque du Soleil has a bunch of shows here, there's Britney Spears here every week, all kinds of residences on the Strip. There's also fights constantly, UFC is here at least once a month. Nightclubs, the greatest nightclubs in the world and I've been to Ibiza, the greatest nightclubs are still here thanks to-- a lot in part to groups like Clique Hospitality. Check that stuff out. And my favorite happens to be at the Rio, though. At the Rio they just built a Fight Dome where FFC has fights every single weekend. MMA, Muay Thai, and boxing, every weekend at fight dome and I'm talking about like professional, big names, every single week.

 

What's your favorite Vegas restaurant?

Every super famous chef has four or five restaurants here and they're all pretty amazing. My favorite steakhouse right now is a place called Scotch 88 at the Palms. You may have heard of N9NE steakhouse, it's the same Master Chef, they just turned it up a little bit, and look forward to dig in pretty deep in the old pockets for that one, well worth it though. There's also a lot of Thai restaurants in Las Vegas off the Strip, my favorite is a spot called Pin Kaow. It's off of Eastern in the 215, really good Thai food and I lived in Thailand for a couple years, so I kind of know what I'm talking about.

 

What's your favorite Vegas business?

As far as Vegas businesses go, now we don't have corporate tax and the cost of living here is really low. It's a pretty rad place to live and so we draw a lot of businesses here and we have a lot of businesses that start here. Businesses like a business called Ignite. That is the world's foremost cannabis company, founded by a good buddy of mine Dan Bilzerian and they just took the cannabis business to the next level. Quality controls off the charts, they've got everything pretty dialed and that started right here in Las Vegas, global cannabis company, publicly traded, amazing, because, of course, cannabis is legal here for recreation for every human like it should be.

 

Do you have a funny Vegas story you can share?

I've been living in Las Vegas for like 26 years, I have a number of really good Las Vegas stories. My story actually comes from other countries, I've been to 63 countries around the world and when people find out that I live in Las Vegas, because everybody knows where Las Vegas is or at least knows of Las Vegas, everybody asks me, "Wow, which casino do you live in?" I have to explain to them, people don't actually live in casinos. If you didn't know that, people don't actually live in casinos. However, off of the Strip it's a town like every other town. We've got neighborhoods, supermarkets and schools and like I said all kinds of other businesses. So it's just like every other town all over the world, except for a little bit better. Like that much-- a little more than that if I had bigger fingers. Anyway, I live here, you should come visit or move on in when you get here, hit me up on the 'Grams or something, we'll go out and I'll show you the town.