John Huntington is probably having way more fun than you are.  After all, his idea of work is to throw a party. And John has thrown some of the biggest parties you’ve ever seen. He’s the force behind the big party with Chuck Liddell, featuring his Iceman Rx Hummer Giveaway, after the UFC 92 fight on the 27^th of December at the MGM Grand.

“I’ve been doing Chuck’s parties for eight years now” he told us, “and this is the one I’m most looking forward to—being close to the New Years’ weekend and the big after party following the Forrest Griffin/Rashad Evans fight. We’ll have a championship fight at the MGM Grand and then the party afterward with Chuck Liddell and the DJs, the Hummer giveaway. It’s going to be bananas, I can’t wait.”

Huntington didn’t start out giving parties. First he learned the ropes, “I started washing dishes at 15 in a restaurant. I’m 42 now and I started as a bar back-up when I was twenty years old. I’ve done every job in this industry. Humping the ice all night, spraying the mats at four in the morning—I know the industry from point A to point Z.  I’m not some college grad that came out and walked into promotions. I’ve been the bar backup, I’ve been the bartender, I’ve been the manager, the general manager, the waiter, the busboy. That type of experience just can’t be beat. It’s a road of hard knocks but it’s brought me to a good place."

Knowing the ins and outs of the restaurant and entertainment business is starting to pay off for Huntington. And the friends he has made over the years help to contribute to his success. His experience in the fight game also helps, “Back in the day, I was fighting Jiu-Jitsu and Muy Thai and I started a production called the World Fighting Alliance with John Lewis. We started that in 2000 and did four shows. Then, in 2003, we sold it to the UFC and, after that, I just continued producing after parties for all the fighters and that’s kind of how I stayed involved with it. So I’ve been part of it for a solid eight years now.”

He has seen MMA grow up over the years though his own involvement has been, thankfully, minimal, “It started when I was younger and then had a resurgence when I was too old— I was beyond thirty then. Now it looks like the UFC is blowing back up again. I have to say I never wanted to be a fighter anyway, that doesn’t seem to be much fun to me, training for nine weeks, dieting like mad, getting hit in the face about 50 times—no thanks, I’ll find something else to do.”

The “something else” has taken many forms over the last few years, “I do a lot of things. I really enjoy working. It’s always something new, that’s just the way I do things.”

Currently he’s been expanding his employment opportunities to include a flourishing DJ business, an offshoot of his party promotions, “I got so sick of telling DJs the kind of music I wanted them to play. They never quite understood exactly what I wanted so I said, ‘Screw it, I’ll just start playing it myself’—so I talked to some of my DJ friends and learned how to DJ and worked my ass off at it. Now I’ve been touring all over the place playing, I’ll be at Lake Charles, Louisiana this weekend at a big French Casino up there. It’s a fun thing to do.

“I like Rock Mash-ups, Rock riffs with Hip-Hop lyrics over the top, different breaks in the music—I just like to control the music and see the crowd get off to it—where you drop this bomb and the whole place goes off—I love that— that’s such a great rush. I’m really into the music and the style of music that I play. For me to get up there and turn other people onto it—that’s just so damn cool.”

Huntington knows his audiences. He’s been studying them for a long time. In one of his many enterprises he consults with nightclub owners, “On product control, spillage, really understanding how much is coming in and what’s going out, point of sale systems, bartender training, server training and I do a lot of consultations on promotion of nightclubs, getting people in their doors.”

He has his ear to the ground for new trends and knows well how they can change overnight, especially in Las Vegas, “If you want to be a player in the night club game,” he says, “you’ve got to be in Vegas, which is right now the night club capital of the world. That’s hilarious to me, because ten years ago when I came here, there were literally three-four clubs in Vegas—now there’s over seventy.

 “And big isn’t any good anymore. All these clubs are all going small. Little lounges with bottle service, nobody’s going for these huge dance clubs anymore.

“People seem to like the small lounges with tons of seating—where you can sit down, buy a bottle, hang out with your friends—that type of thing. The turnover isn’t that great. You don’t have to secure them as much. Security is one of the major costs in the night club industry—security and advertising. Ten years ago it was all about massive clubs now it’s like small lounges with a catchy theme.”

When the Las Vegas drumbeat gets to him, Huntington’s own restaurant is his escape valve, “I own a sushi restaurant, 57 seats, in Jaco beach, Costa Rica called Tsunami Sushi. It’s a great restaurant—we have fishermen that determine what we’re going to serve that day. Whatever they catch that morning, that’s what we serve that night. Our sushi chefs are actually Japanese surfers. We get a lot of people who go down for the surf because the waves are so incredible there. That’s paradise down there!”

Still, his favorite place to work is Las Vegas and he’s putting the finishing touches on a new idea that he thinks will mark a new stage in his life, “Now I’m 100% fully-focusing on my new tattoo shop opening in the Palms Casino called Huntington Ink. It’s just going to blow people’s minds, I’ve been on the phone all morning with my designers and it’s going to be the most incredible tattoo shop anyone’s ever seen. We’re planning a huge grand opening in April with a major band and all kinds of cool stuff. It’ll be my major focus for the next three four months.”

Huntington isn’t a tattoo artist, but he has been a customer before, “I won’t be doing tattoos, but I’ll definitely be there running the business side. Mostly I’ll be doing my forte which is promoting the business. I mean, that’s what I do best. I’ll go out and make the business very well known and I’ll let the artists do their thing.”

If promotion had a hall of fame, John Huntington would be in it. But he has no illusions about his ultimate success in any venture, or what it takes to achieve it, “It takes patience first of all. You have to have the right timing, get into the game at the right time. And, you’ve got to be willing to take the knocks. I mean, I’ve written some big checks on failures, you know. But I’ve had a lot bigger upside than I’ve had downside.”