The MMA Digest

Photo: MacDanzig.blogspot.com

In his blog, Mac Danzig gives his thoughts on last week’s episode of The Ultimate Fighter 6 where he defeated John Kolosci.

Well, now we see that nothing goes in one person’s (or one team’s) favor for too long with this show. The pendulum swings both ways, and Team Serra’s gift for winning six out of the eight prelims was that they would now have to fight each other in at least two matchups. That’s the way it goes on this show and when it’s all said and done, it’s really only about one fighter. Like Dana said; “only one guy gets the contract.”

Thankfully, Tommy and I didn’t get matched up. That would have been a real let down for us and I distinctly remember Hughes saying sternly to the team that he “wouldn’t let that happen.”

On a side note, I love the little facial shots of Hughes and Serra’s reactions to the picks. On either side, you have Robbie Lawler and Drago. Both of them stone cold. I really liked both those guys. I didn’t get to hang out with Drago too much at all, but Robbie Lawler is one cool kid. He was really one of those guys that you actually looked forward to seeing every day. He has a good heart and it’s easy to make him laugh. I wish they would have shown more of him this season, but he was pretty quiet for the most part. Another priceless facial shot is Richie’s reaction to getting matched up with George. That’s the kind of smile you give when a judge sentences you to ninety hours of community service while your lawyer is elbowing you to keep a happy demeanor.

I notice that a recurring theme in John Kolosci’s interviews and a little bit in Serra’s as well (if I’m not mistaken) is the idea that I like to “go to my back” or that I’m “comfortable falling to guard.” I really have no idea where these guys came up with that notion. Just because I submitted Joey Scarola from my guard doesn’t mean I wanted to be there. I simply take what I can in a fight.

I have a couple decision losses on my record from years ago and the main reason for those losses was takedowns. I learned from that and I am the biggest advocate of staying standing and/or getting top position. It’s way too hard to win a fight off your back these days and although I never wrestled in school, my first real pro training camp in 2002 was RAW with Frank Trigg and Iowa standout & World Cup freestyle wrestling champion Rico Chiapperelli as my coaches. I developed a decent takedown defense if nothing else during my time with those guys. I can’t remember when the last time I pulled guard in a fight was … maybe never.

The sparring situation … I really have no idea why there was so little sparring in our training. It was mostly hitting the bag, grappling and conditioning circuits. A good friend of mine from Season 5 told me that his team only sparred once during the entire six week period. I’m sorry, but that’s just absurd. In my opinion, sparring is at the top of the list when it comes to fight preparation, but any time I would ask about it, the coaches usually skirted the question. I, of course, didn’t pry because anything you complain about will get turned into a huge issue (as we’ve all seen many times).

About the whole ”note on the wall” thing: Yes, I did feel like I was negative, and I did feel like I was going to be portrayed as some grumpy miser on the show and yes, I felt a need to be more positive. I said all those things. But the whole ”writing on the wall” thing was really poking fun at a guy on one of the past seasons, who, in a vain attempt to get more TV time, wrote a bunch of cheesy motivational quotes on the wall that were laughable at best. I was basically making fun of that, but the edge of the story was never told. If there are two things I can always do, they are: make weight, and change my attitude without writing it on the wall to remind myself. That was a joke, more less.

One thing that I wasn’t happy about was how much they jumped around with the time sequence. I try not to harp on this too much, but by the time I fought John Kolosci, Blake and I were already seeing eye to eye again and I was no longer being so disrespectful to him. On this episode, they use some things that were said about Blake (rather condescendingly) by me, that I said right after the few days we were feuding a few weeks earlier. I’m not sure why I feel the need to mention this, but I think I’d like everyone to know that I wasn’t so patronizing to him all the time.

The “coin toss” episode was pretty funny in real life. They edited it down to about one minute, but in all actuality it took about 20 minutes for them to do the entire thing. It was the most unorganized, dysfunctional attempt at achieving a choice that I have ever seen. Our team just sat there as Serra and Dana argued about what exactly would happen when the coin was tossed, and whether the guys would be sent to Hughes’ team if they called it correctly or incorrectly. I remember Ray Longo trying to get them to stop and explain it all again multiple times, while War Machine would chime in sporadically with stuttering gibberish that nobody seemed to listen to. At least 10 times, Drago yelled in his powerful Long Island accent “C’mon! Just DO it!” and Dana had to stop a few times because all the bickering had gotten him confused as to how the whole thing would actually work. And you all thought flipping a coin was easy.

I think I understand the initial idea behind why Richie wanted to talk with Hughes behind closed doors, but come on, how can you take a guy seriously that wears his hat like that, and says the word “awkward” twenty times in every sentence? Hughes wasn’t into it, and I laughed again when I saw Robbie’s facial expression.

The fight with John went well for me. I was in a good mindset from the beginning and I went into work mode. The first knee I hit him with really did alot of damage and everything he tried played into my game. I have a way of wearing people out who try and take me down against the fence and this was a prime example of that. I was simply punching when I saw an opening at first, but thanks to some great coaching by Lawler, Fiore and Hughes, I remembered my elbows and let them loose. To his credit, John hung in there and tried his best, but I could feel him breaking with every failed takedown attempt. I have a lot of respect for John and I was simply the better man that day. I think with the right training, John will be a force among up and coming welterweights.

Team Serra may have had great coaches and a bunch of wins, but they had a few imbeciles on their team too. You think I was grumpy? Just imagine if I had to be around a guy who has two anarchy tattoos, but can’t explain what it means or even spell it correctly.

My corny speech at the end was kind of embarrassing to watch, but I felt it was necessary at the time and I’m glad I said it. Our team had been through so much with all the losses and the negativity, and I was just letting everyone know that I appreciated all the help they gave me in helping prepare, and was happy to be with some solid guys, regardless of the losses.

Photo: Peta2.com 

“The Fighting Life” blog conducted an interview with Mac Danzig and asked for his opinion on his coach on The Ultimate Fighter 6, Matt Hughes. Danzig responded:

It’s hard for me to judge Hughes. He was kind of up and down, like the rest of us. The entire experience was an emotional rollercoaster for all of us, even the coaches. I really didn’t like the way he handled his coaching when we started dealing with the losses, but I can’t judge him for that. He’s only human and everybody deals with stuff in their own way.

I mean, I flipped out on Blake and treated him poorly for no real reason, so there were times when I didn’t deal with stuff in the best way either. He may have let his rivalry with Matt Serra cloud his judgment and some of those practices were really negative and made me not want to be there. But he also has good sides to him and is very caring.

He wanted to win and he’s very competitive. Maybe he’s a better fighter than a coach. I guess that’s the best way I can say it. I still don’t really know him. The environment of the show was a synthetic environment. They call it “reality” because it wasn’t scripted, but it wasn’t real either. I have no vocabulary to explain how strange the whole experience was.

Photo: MacDanzig.blogspot.com

The Ultimate Fighter 6 contestant gives his thoughts on this weeks episode of the reality series on his blog:

So this episode, we finally get to see some footage of the great Tommy Speer.

Just like Billy said, Tommy bears a very close resemblance (personality-wise) to a “robot”. We were all pretty burnt out in general, and trying to get emotion out of any of us, let alone someone like Tommy, was like trying to get blood from a stone, or getting Jon Koppenhaver to say something intelligent. Oh wait, we’ll get to him in a minute.

Matt Hughes was just trying to get us all motivated, but Tommy Speer is as quiet and reserved as they come. Hughes wanted emotion from him, but sometimes being emotionless is good in this sport. He was also the youngest on the show. I recall many, many hours in which Tommy spent simply staring blankly at the ceiling. He had an innate ability to stay in one position quietly for hours upon end. I had no problem with this. He really was the perfect roommate.

Although he was a vicious pool player, I don’t remember him doing much besides laying in bed, training hard, and playing “gin“ with Bowman. Seldom was the occasion that he ever complained, talked loudly, voiced an opinion, or spoke in general. I really liked Tommy. He is a simple guy, doesn’t get involved with too much deep thought, and has a toughness instilled in him that someone like Koppenhaver could never fathom, no matter how many horribly-placed tattoos of inanimate weapons he puts on his body.

Ah yes, the “War Machine.“ You know, they say if you don’t have anything good to say about somebody, don’t say anything at all. For some reason, this guy has felt the need to spend hours of his own time in online chat rooms, trying to talk bad about me. I’ll let that speak for itself. I have a job to do. It’s called training full-time and fighting. If I spent all my time and money getting tattooed and spray-tanned, I might look more like your typical “So-Cal” meat-head, but I would suck horribly at fighting. Case in point.

During the fight, (which took place the same day, roughly 30 minutes after J-Roc’s loss) I was completely distraught. All the pressure of being the only person on the team to win a fight (and the incredibly negative feeling that brought) cumulated, and I felt sick. I was in a real bad place when John had Tommy’s back, looking to sink the choke. The blood was flowing and everyone from Serra’s team yelled “He tapped!” I felt like walking out of the gym to clear my mind.

The entire time up until then, I had done my best not to buy-in to the “Team Serra vs. team Hughes” concept, but when Tommy reversed John and got on top, it was war. I’m not sure if I ever cheered so hard for somebody. At the end of the fight, they were both exhausted, but Tommy was standing while “War Machine” laid there.

Finally, a victory.

Photo: MacDanzig.blogspot.com

The Ultimate Fighter 6 competitor Mac Danzig gave his thoughts on the last episode of the Spike TV reality series on his blog:

“The bottom line is, I’ve got a bunch of guys on here that aren’t giving it 100 percent.“

Those are the words of Matt Hughes, born out of frustration more than anything else. It’s hard to coach a team in this situation and Hughes was doing what he thought was best, but in my humble opinion, he was letting the rivalry with (Matt) Serra get the better of him.

Around this time, while the team was in a serious slump, the lack of overall competition experience for many of the fighters in the house had become painfully apparent to me. Once I came to this realization and accepted it, I eased back on my criticism of some of the guys and looked at it for what it’s worth. They were there and it “was what it was.” But Matt was at his wit’s end and it was no longer enjoyable to be around him or go to practice.

I understand Hughes’ anger to an extent, but when your coach tells you the he “doesn’t even want to be here” and says “I wish I wasn’t on the show,” how do you think that makes the fighter feel? Like crap. That’s how it made us feel.

And the practices were not anything to look forward to. Not because they were so physically demanding, but just because of the negativity that was in the air. It was a bad vibe all around and nobody liked it. J-Roc and I were sick of being scolded because some of the other guys lost their fights. Being talked down to like that doesn’t really sit well with us either. We were just as fed up with the negativity of the practices and the lectures as Hughes was upset was with the losses.

The reason why I personally don’t respond well to that sort of coaching is because I’m used to years of self-motivation and self-training. When I first had a real coaching situation five years ago, I was treated disrespectfully, so I left and did things on my own. I found success with that strategy and these days I find it hard to accept the “military“ mindset of training.

The whole bit about how he gave up being around his 10-month-old daughter to be on the show was pretty weak, in my opinion. At least he could talk with his wife and kids every day on the phone, drive around Vegas, do whatever he wanted within reason (and get paid well to do it). If he wanted to blow off some steam, he could take a day off, or go somewhere without cameras in his face.

Billy Miles has a 2-year-old son at home that he had no contact with whatsoever. John Kolosci had a similar situation. We were all giving up a huge part of out lives to be there, and him trying to guilt-trip us didn’t come off well to me, especially because I felt our sacrifices during that time were greater than his. That being said, I still maintain that Hughes really cared deep down, and that was simply his way of dealing with it. He is only human, just like all of us, and that’s how he chose to handle it. I can’t say for sure that I would have been able to act in a more noble manner myself, if I were in his shoes.

The conversation between Dana White and Hughes was puzzling to watch. It’s not like Dana is always walking around that building with his suit on, and just happened to pass by Matt and have a talk. That was some “tv magic” in my opinion. I didn’t know Dana real well at this point, but I have spent enough time around him and sat and talked with him enough to know that the things he said to Hughes must have been strategic for the show. I really see no other explanation. I mean come on… “Have a F’n ‘come to Jesus’ meeting with them” … I seriously think that entire conversation was a bit contrived, and although in no way scripted, certainly “drama motivated.” I think on a personal level, Dana has a lot more respect for the fighters than what that particular scene would lead you to believe.

I thought Barrera did OK and showed some heart considering his experience level. After training with him, I expected Ben to have a really good chance at submitting him rather easily, but Dan didn’t let that happen and I was impressed. If I’m not mistaken, he pulled a ”Corey Hill” and told everyone that he had three fights prior. It wasn’t until after the show was over, that we realized that was his first actual sanctioned MMA fight.

In Barrera’s post-fight interview, he is banged up but never hangs his head. He’s a tough dude. But seriously, what’s with all these “spartan” references? Ever since “300″ came out, all of the sudden, everyone is a freakin’ Spartan. Doesn’t make much sense to me …

George Sotiropilous was someone who I never spoke with much during the six weeks. We didn’t really even say “hi” much. I don’t really think our personalities meshed and we were both eying each other as potential finalists. That being said, we never had any serious problems and I feel we had a common mutual respect that not a lot of the other guys shared. George is a competitor. He trains hard and wants to win. When you’re surrounded by goofballs, you’re not going to be happy all the time and I think that’s where George was at this point in time.

I completely agree with everything he said in his interviews. He isn’t anyone’s “mummy,” and he’s right, those guys are supposed to be adults, so they should wake themselves up. Guys who aren’t real competitors will always hate on those of us who are. They will whine, complain and try to talk bad about someone who is serious about training. They do this to make up for their own lack of dedication. I think that is exactly what happened between George and a few of those guys. He was there to win the show, and that’s something certain people will never understand.

George also didn’t take any crap from anyone, (which I find respectable) and at times, he became ornery, but it’s impossible to be happy all the time in that house, as you’ve seen from me People like us would train our butts off, and as a result, be grumpy and anti-social to blow off steam, which made certain losers in the house uptight. But those same losers felt it was acceptable to get drunk out of their minds, multiple times during the 6-week period and act like complete fools, and somehow, that was considered justifiable.

I’m glad we finally get to see some of J-Roc this episode. The guys is hilarious and does great impersonations, in addition to being one heck of an athlete. We were both glad to be on the same team as each other. People will watch the show and get a false impression of his skill level because of how his fight went, but trust me, the guy is extremely talented. I truly think he gave George way too much respect in there and was too hesitant. That happens sometimes. Fighting isn’t easy. All I know, is it could have been much more competitive.

During the actual fight, I think J-Roc may have psyched himself out, but since I’m not him, I can’t say for sure. I think the huge amount of stress and pressure Hughes was putting on him (even if only inadvertently) really got to him. George on the other hand, looked to be in the right mind state to win. It’s a shame, because J-Roc really could have done something big in the tournament.

J-Roc went off after the fight. People at home might not understand how incredibly hard it is to go through all of that and then lose that way. That’s how he chose to deal with it at that moment in time and I can’t fault him for it. At one point, I put myself in between J-Roc and the camera man because I was worried he might attack the guy, or at least send his camera across the room just like the chair. The look on Blake’s face during the tantrum was priceless. I had to laugh when I saw that. I think after the first couple of chairs got hurled, we were all considering ducking out and preserving ourselves physically.

Next week, we have a guy who is more concerned with tanning and tattoos, against a quiet kid, born and raised on a farm. Let’s see what happens …

Photo: MacDanzig.blogspot.com 

Mac Danzig gives his thoughts on episode 6 on his TUF 6 blog:

Ben and Dan get matched up and we get right into a training montage that includes footage from a whole load of different training sessions, all spliced together. This is especially apparent, because it shows Blake training with him, and Blake never did get back on the mats after his fight with Richie, because after all, his ACL was completely torn.

Dan’s knee-drop on J-Roc’s baby-makers gets aired. I remember every time Dan would train, somebody would get hurt. The guy was physically and mentally a little bit out of control. J-Roc was convinced that Dan did it to buy time because he was tired. That may be the case, but I think Dan is simply out of control. Kind of like a toddler on high amounts of sugar, just running around with reckless abandon, unaware of other people’s testicles. Unaware of anything at all, really.

This episode doesn’t even begin to show Dan for who he really is. I won’t give away too much of what might be in store for future episodes, but a few examples of his absent-mindedness stand out in my mind. One time, Barrera was finally convinced by someone to do some laundry after about 3 or 4 weeks of simply stealing other people’s clothes and using the homeless man’s “take a swim in the pool with your clothes on” method.

I’m not sure if he had ever done laundry before, but he ended up grabbing a giant wad of dirty clothes, along with various other random items, and tossing them directly into the washer with Paul’s clothes, mid-cycle. When Paul went to check his laundry, it was mixed in with a bunch of still-dirty clothes that weren’t his, and if I remember correctly, plastic zip-lock bags, an unopened energy bar, and loose almonds everywhere. The thing is, you couldn’t even really get that mad at him for it. Like I said, it was kind of like having a young child around the house. (One with ADDHD, anyway) You couldn’t get through to him by getting mad at him. Dan is just Dan. And we liked our crazy toddler of an Ultimate fighter.

Barrera was the only guy in the house who had the freedom of being able to go on monitored runs throughout the neighborhood, simply due to the fact that he was the only one crazy enough to be up at 4 a.m. to do it…

Hughes actually beat up on Barrera like that multiple times during the show. I really think thats just his way of asserting his dominance over someone who has a lot of spunk. Never once did he act that way in training to me. I think he wanted to “break” Dan, so to speak. It’s more of a college wrestling mentality, I think. He really picked on Dan during training, but it was all in good fun, I guess. Dan really sucked up his hand injury too. He may be a nut, but he’s not a complainer, that’s for sure. That thing had to hurt, broken or not.

The incident with his wife and the phone call happened on private terms, so this is the first time anything from that was seen by us. All crazy screaming by Dan’s wife aside, it has to be hard to get a call like that. This happened within days of Paul’s family tragedy, and it just made things worse for all of us, thinking about what negative things might be going on at home that we have no control over. Barrera is a trooper for dealing with that the way he did. I’m not going to judge his wife too much by that call, because keep in mind, she is fairly young, and the stresses of all the responsibilities he left for her to take care of while he was gone probably drove her crazy (as if being married to Dan Barrera wasn’t hard enough) … (lol) All joking aside, that was a hard thing to go through and I felt for Dan being in that position.

The fight: A lot of people don’t understand how hard it is for a seasoned veteran to get in the ring and do exactly what the coach wants them to, let alone someone with no professional fights like Dan. They listed him as having 1 fight, but as far as I know, that was a Pankration match on mats in a high school gym with no strikes to the head. In my opinion, that’s not an MMA fight. Dan has an amateur boxing and wrestling background. Considering his lack of experience, I thought he did really well. He fought a very awkward fighter and even though he had a brain-fart or two during the match, he showed heart, which goes a long way. Ben Saunders has alot of potential as a fighter. That body-type along with his athleticism could make for a really excellent fighter in the future.

At one point, Dan stands above Ben and delivers nonsensical slaps to Saunder’s ankles instead of letting him up like we were all screaming to him to do. It was frustrating from a coaching standpoint, but it’s harder than you’d think to do the right thing in there all the time. Who knows, he may have been buying time since he himself was tired. I personally thought there should have been another round, as did most other people who saw the fight, including Dana. Whenever you have people with point-karate backgrounds judging MMA, something is wrong, and you hardcore fans know exactly who I’m talking about.

Mac Danzig shares his thoughts on Episode 5 of TUF 6 in the OC Register:
http://www.ocregister.com/sports/danzig-tuf-ufc-1896853-welterweight-season

I’m the bad guy this week.I got a feeling this one’s going to bevery long. …

So Episode 5starts with some clips of the Bowman fight which includes descriptive voice-overs by some of the fighters.I said something along the lines of “You don’t lose in that fashion, jumping to the mat and covering up.” The interview where I said this took place right after the fight, before we realized that Bowman had a legit knee injury. Not having the luxury of any type of video replay, a few of us on Team Hughes, including me, thought that Bowman’s knee was not as injured as he made it seem and that he simply jumped to the mat during Richie’s flurry.

We were wrong, and it was uncool of me to say that and jump to conclusions before Blake had a diagnosis on his knee. Again, they show me smiling and shaking my head.As I explained last week, this wasn’t directed towards Blake, I was shaking my head at Richie’s celebration.The fight simply looked bad and at the time, I really started getting down on Blake because I saw his fight as an embarrassment and I truly felt he was a physical liability.

We get to see the winning locker room where Matt Serra refers to Hughes as a “(expletive)” and the segment soon ends.I still speak with Blake more often than anyone else from the show, and he truly believes that if his knee didn’t go out on him like that, he would have beaten Richie, and I honestly don’t have any reason not to agree with him now….

http://www.ocregister.com/sports/danzig-tuf-ufc-1896853-welterweight-season

Photo: MacDanzig.blogspot.com 

Mac Danzig gives his thoughts on episode 4 in the OC Register:

And here we are with episode “vier”.

After the breakdown of last week’s fight, we go directly into the Team Hughes training session. I’m not sure how it’s going to be looked at by the fans, but hindsight being 20/20, I’d say that Hughes wasn’t actually trying to “punish” us even if that’s the way I felt at the time. There was definitely a dark cloud over many of our training sessions and the only quarrel I really had with the practices was how remedial the techniques were. At times, myself and J-Roc felt as though Hughes was “dumbing-down“the practices for some of the guys on the team who had a more novice skill-set. This made practices a little bit mundane, but one must keep in mind how hard of a job it is to coach 8 completely different fighters. In all honesty, Hughes was doing what he felt would help pull us together as a team. That was his motive from day one and he stuck with it. You can’t fault the man for that.He is a good coach and a good person, plain and simple.

Seeing the meeting that Team Serra had where War Machine asked to fight Blake doesn’t really surprise me. As soon as he got to the house, I had heard through the grapevine that he was talking about winning his first fight and pulling out. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that his heart wasn’t in it to fight the best or to test himself.

To go along with everything else so far this season that is completely out of chronological order, I do have to say that the whole “rib injury situation” with Blake happened about a week before he even got picked to fight if memory serves me correctly. At one point I remember the medics had a routine where they would saran-wrap an ice pack to his stomach after each practice, which left him looking roughly 5 months pregnant. Of course, this was laughed and joked about by all of us (Bowman included).Blake has a great sense of humor, as does J-Roc. I fancied myself a decent impersonator before I met those two guys.T hey blew me away. Hopefully, we’ll get to see some of their comedic relief later in the season.

Since we’re on the subject of things being out of time sequence, lets address the Dorian incidents. Before I get into it, let me say that the rule when you first enter the house is: “Don’t talk to the crew, don’t make eye contact with the crew.The crew isn’t there.”

From the first day after his fight, Dorian was having severe bouts of vertigo. Vertigo basically means that your entire body feels like it’s spinning even when it’s not. It’s especially bad when you lay flat on your back. I felt for Dorian because I’ve had some pretty nasty bouts of vertigo in my days and it’s one of the most miserable ailments you can have. His equilibrium was obviously not balanced after taking some shots in his fight, and whenever he trained, his head was spinning. Since all he wanted to do was train, and now he couldn’t even do that, he became frustrated. As I’ve said in earlier blogs, we all went crazy at one time or another.We all lost control in our own ways. Dorian didn’t take well to the cameras and before we knew it, he was threatening the crew. One thing you don’t see is that this went on for a few days. The incident where he slapped the boom-mic happened and we were all brought in by the main producer for a meeting.We were under the impression that the incident wouldn’t air because of the idea that the viewer isn’t supposed to think about, or see the crew.We were wrong.

He swore up and down that he wouldn’t do it again, but the anger kept building up and he had the incident where he walked towards the cameraman a few days later. Dorian (like all of us) couldn’t escape the cameras for one second to clear his mind.Even when he went into, as he says, “da bafroom” to wash his face, there were cameras watching him there too. It was like this for everybody, but he happened to take it personal. We all liked Dorian and did our best to try and calm him down and remind him that this is what we all signed up for. Nobody wanted to see him get kicked off the show. He has unlimited potential and is a team player, but like all of us, he’s a little crazy. Remember, this is “The Ultimate Fighter” not “Top Chef.” Something has to be a little bit wrong with you to do this sort of thing for a living. Luckily, Dana is alot cooler and (more) understanding thanmost people realize and decided not to have him leave. Good stuff.

The personality clash between Richie and I was mostly due to the fact that he simply would not stop talking about his made-up sex stories. I subscribe to the theory that “hating” someone gives them power over you, so I wouldn’t say I hate Richie, rather I feel sorry for him.The viewer at home doesn’t realize that Mr. Hightower spent 99 percent of the time in the house obnoxiously explaining in finite detail how he went about receiving sexual favors from various strippers and prostitutes. This was coupled with the fact that every word he spoke reeked of “I am trying very hard to sound as cool as possible.”

Other guys on Serra’s team told me that every time they were in the van going to practice, Richie would yell at women in the cars next to the van, telling them that they were “filthy whores” and that he would “bust his (expletive) on them.” The maturity level was definitely low.

It almost got to the point where we all began questioning his heterosexuality. It really reminded me of Jr. High, when some 13-year-old virgin would make up the most detailed and disgusting sex stories to try and convince his buddies that he was cool. I didn’t like that kind of talk when I was 13, and certainly don’t like it now.Whether he was making them up, or they really happened, it doesn’t matter much. Either way, he is not the kind of person I would want to share a roof with. Thank Esther he wasn’t on my team.

What can you say about the Bowman-Hightower fight? It pretty much happened the way the way you saw it. There isn’t much need for an explanation. Alot of us (including me) started to feel like Blake was more of a physical liability than we had imagined. It’s unfortunate because he is a great guy and has all the mental makings of a great fighter. He (at that point) simply didn’t have the physical durability to compete at this level. The little smirk you see from me afterwards was not directed towards Blake’s loss, but to the ridiculousness or Richie’s celebration, which included kissing Blake 3 times in total. If you kiss a guy like that, it better be because you just had an epic war, ala Arturo Gatti vs. Mickey Ward. Then and only then is kissing another man three consecutive times and telling him “I love you, man, you’re so tough” acceptable in my book. Then again, this isn’t really ‘my book’, so what can I do?

A-ha! The preview for next episode? Alright haters, it’s time to get your hating goggles on and hate you some Mac Danzig. And fair-weather fans, it’s time to jump ship! Hey, like I said, everyone “loses control.” Let’s see what next episode has in store.

Till next time!…

Photo: MacDanzig.blogspot.com

Mac Danzig gives his thoughts on the third episode of The Ultimate Fighter 6 in the OC Register: 

So, here we are with the third installment of TUF 6…

After the intro with the same excruciatingly bad theme song we’ve been subjected to for six seasons, (which includes the embarrassingly bad line: “bear witness to the fitness of the modern warrior”) this episode starts off with some replays of Matt Arroyo’s win over Dorian.We then segway into the Serra camp contemplating which fighter on their team was going to get picked for the next fight.During this scene we learn that Richie is actually coordinated enough to jump rope for at least 5 seconds at a time. This comes as a total surprise to me, seeing as the guy can’t comb his purple hair properly, wear a hat like a normal human being, or speak a sentence without telling a story about some stripper he supposedly “banged.”

The fights get picked and Hughes chose Billy to fight John Kolosci. Keep in mind, at this point, Hughes pretty much decided on his own who he wanted to fight when it was our turn to pick. Obviously Hughes thought it was a good matchup and everyone agreed, so nobody argued differently. Everyone felt it was a winnable fight for Billy Miles.

As soon as Billy got picked and started to cut weight for the weigh-ins, I noticed a change in him. Although his weakness is submissions, up until then, Billy had been this extremely strong wrestler that could muscle his way out of most all submission attempts, and could easily grind through every hard practice and out-wrestle everyone else on the team while doing it. Now that it was fight time, it seemed as though the pressure began wearing on him mentally. His shoulder was bothering him bad and he was giving up positions in practice that he normally wouldn’t.Billy was probably my most trusted friend on the show from beginning to end and I wanted to help him out with it, but when he started draining himself to cut such a huge amount of weight, he was almost a different person. Make no mistake, each and every fighter on the show broke down mentally in their own way at some point during the six weeks. Unfortunately for Billy, it was right before his fight.

Meanwhile, John Kolosci had some problems of his own with being sick, which can really wear on you when you have to make weight and fight on such short notice. Also, we finally get to see some of John’s personality and as everyone can see, he is a good guy with a good head on his shoulders. Some people on our team started calling him “American Psycho” because he was this guy with a corporate desk job and the friendliest disposition, yet here he was on a fighting reality show so naturally, he must be a serial killer or something like that.

Regarding Hughes’ speech about only having 2 or 3 fights left, this was just one of many “heart-to-heart” talks Matt and the coaches would have with us during the course of the show. Although our team had it’s ups and downs, I still feel Hughes is a genuine person who cared about his team and he would often share personal info about his career and his home life to help motivate us and bring us closer as a team. That being said, I think fighters talk about retirement more than they follow through with it. For example, I have seriously considered leaving the sport at least 3 times in my career and I am just now getting to the point where I may be able to make a decent living doing it. This sport is extremely hard on all levels and every person who has dedicated themselves to it has contemplated quitting at one time or another. To be honest, even though he has had a long, storied career with many fights, I think we’ll see Hughes alot more than 2 or 3 more times. Show him the money, and he’ll be there, just like Randy, just like all of us.

Oh yeah, so they wheeled a TV in for a few hours so that we could watch the UFC.The whole team aspect is really weird and while Hughes would try to one-up the other team by bringing food and things like that, Serra’s guys kept this whole attitude of “my coach is cooler that your coach” which is just stupid. This brought me back to grade school when kids would brag about how “cool” their gym teacher was.I just wanted out of the whole situation. I couldn’t care less about Serra and Hughes’ rivalry. Just give me my fights and send me home.

The french fries were horrible, but they were the only thing “Hooters” had that I could eat. Matt offered to have some real food brought in for me, but I told him not to bother. Just for the record, the fries made me sick and I felt like garbage all day.

I guess I could have just drank a gang load of cheap liquor like those guys from Serra’s team did if I knew I was going to make myself sick.What you don’t see is, while these guys were carrying on and making noise & being completely belligerent, I actually woke up from my sleep and asked them politely to take it outside and they immediately did, because at this point there was still a common respect we had for eachother.

So Joey finally leaves. Our team really had no idea this was going to happen until he was gone. All that stuff like the talk with Dana happened behind the scenes without our knowledge.You can see by looking at his eyes while Serra and Dana lectured him, that his mind was already made up. He wanted out and nothing was going to stop him. Kinda like an alcoholic. They say they aren’t going to drink again, but they’re thinking of that bottle of Patron while they’re saying it.

I remember talking to Joey that morning before our team left for practice and he said something to me like,“Hey man, when this is all over, we’ll be chillin’ together.” I really didn’t understand that he was gonna take off. When we got back from practice that morning, we learned that Joey was gone. This didn’t sit too well with me. It made me realize how negative the effects of being on the show were, and how being in the house was so bad it forced Joey to give up on any of his dreams of fighting for the UFC.It may sound stupid, but this caused me to break down a little bit and change the way I felt about being there.As you will see in future episodes, I was not the happiest of campers.

Weight cutting?I’m not even going to touch that exchange Coach Fiore and Billy had while “wrestling” with a 10-foot pole. You know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, on to the fight.Billy is a good fighter, but lacks experience. I feel that the coaches and I made a mistake by letting him warm up the way he did. After a short jump-rope and a few minutes of pads, he literally paced back and forth for 20 minutes and that was his warm-up.I think we all felt he had the fight in the bag, so nobody questioned it.

Once he got in there, it was obvious, he was a deer caught in the headlights. The pressure of knowing millions will be watching you can catch up, and that’s exactly what happened to Billy.He froze up and did nothing, while John was still moving and thinking about technique. What could have been a very competitive fight turned into an easy win for John as he used his patented guillotine to finish. The team was pretty shocked and upset.Not necessarily at Billy himself, but at the circumstance. This was the beginning of some super-negative stuff on out team as you’ll see.

Till next time… take care and watch hard.

Mac Danzig will be writing a weekly blog inthe OC Register, this is his first post:
Well, here we go with episode numero uno…

Alot of the drama in this episode was built around the “rivalry” between Matt Serra and Matt Hughes. Serra totally plays into this and lets everyone know exactly how he feels about Hughes. While, on the other hand, Hughes plays it cool and acts like he doesn’t care. Truth is, these are just two completely different people from completely different backgrounds, and with all the differences between the two, it’s easy to get some friction going.

There was definitely an awkwardness between the two whenever they had to be around each other and you could feel it in the air… Not just between Hughes and Serra, but the assistant coaches on both sides as well.

Well, it wasn’t long after we arrived in Vegas, that we were shipped directly to the gym and started the evaluation. It became pretty obvious for me right away that I was giving up alot of size to these guys since I am normally a lightweight fighter. There was alot of unspoken tension between all of us fighters as well, because we had no idea what teams we were going to be on, or who we would have to fight in the first round. There was quite a bit of scouting done by the 16 of us on eachother, not just the scouting the coaches were doing.

Out of all the crap that happened in the evaluations, the funniest thing to me came when I was partnered up with Richie to do some drills for Matt Hughes. Richie was exhausted, just drilling takedowns and kept trying to “sandbag.” When we were asked to do five takedowns, he’d do one, and ask me “that’s four, right?” (hoping that the coaches didn’t see him). Right away, I knew what kind of heart that guy had. He wasn’t there to fight, he was there to be on TV… It wasn’t long before I realized that there were at least five or six other guys on there with the same M.O.

Another thing that stands out in my mind was not so funny. As everyone heard, Roman was injured during the evaluation, but what wasn’t shown, is how exactly it happened. Roman and I were paired up during a live grappling session during team Hughes’ part of the evaluation. I went for a kimura on Roman, he defended, and all of the sudden “snap!” I heard his arm crack and I immediately let go before he even thought about tapping. I felt awful, because even though it was a total accident, here we were, on the very first day of the show, and I just broke this guy’s arm. Roman is so tough, he just shook it off and kept training even with a fractured elbow, but both he and I knew how bad the injury was and we both feared the worst.

As far as team picks were concerned, I honestly didn’t care much who picked me. They are both excellent coaches in their own way, and at the same time, neither of them are anybody who I would personally seek out to be my coach in any other training circumstance. I have to admit, I was a little surprised Serra didn’t pick me after Joe Scarola, but, hey, that’s way it goes, he made the bad decision, not me.

After everyone settled in at the house, Roman would be gone for hours at different doctors and nobody knew what was happening while he was there. So basically, nobody knew about the fit he threw at the doctor’s office until now. When it was revealed that he was being sent home, we all felt horrible, especially me. And of course, the worst aspect is the fact that he was replaced with someone who didn’t have the same character and dignity that he had. In fact, Roman’s replacement was the polar opposite of him in every way. People will judge Roman for how he flipped out at the Doctor’s office, but he is not that kind of person under any other circumstance. You really have to think about how horrible it must be to get sent home after just 3 days.

Another thing that wasn’t shown was my friendship with Joe Scarola. He and I bonded on the first two days, and although I hadn’t known him for a long time, we shared the same views on life and training and had some good talks about it. He was one of the only people I really got along with, so when Hughes told me the very next day, that he wanted me to fight Scarola, I was sort of taken back, but I didn’t hesitate. It’s just business and I knew what I had to do. There was no doubt in my mind whatsoever that I would win that fight. I just wanted to get it done and over with so that we could be friends again.

Training for the fight went well and both Hughes and Robbie Lawler were a great help in getting my gameplan down. I got to work with Robbie on the pads and I found that he’s an excellent coach.

The food situation is funny because, everybody was interested in my diet and started ordering the same food as me. This screwed me up because I can only eat certain types of food, while they, on the other hand, can eat whatever the producers stock the fridge with. I got a little heated at one point when everybody kept wanting to taste my food, but it was more-less just the tension of having a fight coming up that set me off… (In case you didn’t know, us fighters have PFS, which is worse than PMS in many ways.)

Going into the fight with Joey, I was confident. I honestly thought I was going to beat him standing, but that’s just not the way it went. Puzzling to me, was how Serra would yell “good Joey!” during times where Joey was definitly in trouble. It was like he was trying to change the fight through some sort of audible osmosis. Maybe next time I get in a car accident, I’ll just yell “Good!… This is good… great!” and the cars will magically fix themselves… I don’t know what he was thinking.

From the beginning, I knew I was in control, and although Joey is an awesome Jiu-Jitsu player, I have way more experience than him with striking on the ground, and once I started hitting him, (even from my back) I could feel him folding mentally. When I heard there was 30 seconds left, I went for broke and set up my triangle. Even though Joey tapped with only five seconds left, it was checkmate, he was literally about to pass out. All this crap Serra kept saying about how “he was looking for a way out and found it” is bull, in my opinion. That notion just takes away from my win and I think it’s pretty weak on Matt’s part to say it. Truth is, Joey was caught in a tight triangle by someone who happened to be better than him that day, and that’s all there is to it.

Needless to say, getting the first fight out of the way was quite a relief, and now, all I had to do was concentrate on training and sit back and watch the other prelims unfold.

Till next week!…

What was a big lesson you learned from the experience on TUF 6?
I learned that being mentally superior competition-wise means more than anything else in fighting. I kinda already knew that, but the experience on the show was proof.

Are you curious as to how the editing is going to come out for yourself and others?
Yeah, I’m curious. I think that there are a ton of things leading up to certain incidents that will not be shown. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to be the “pissed off guy” on the show for the most part. It was very annoying at times, being around a few immature and unprofessional people.

What’d you do when you finally got out of the house?
I just turned myself into a recluse for a few days, I stayed away from almost all human contact and I relaxed. I ordered a lot of delivery from Vegan restaurants. Enjoying solitude never felt so good.