Tag: The Ultimate Fighter 18

Note: All quotes and material were obtained firsthand by Bleacher Report through a one-on-one between Jessamyn Duke and Bleacher Report’s Riley Kontek.

Maybe this week’s episode will surprise some people, but then again, maybe it won’t. Before I get into the obvious issue that was focused on this week, I’ll talk about the matchup between Cody and Anthony.

I expected this matchup to be one of the best fights of the season. Anthony had proven that he was tough, scrappy and could come back to win a fight even if he had a slow start. Cody was clearly one of the top guys in the house. Not only was he a large guy for 135, he had one of the most impressive fights to get into the house against a very good opponent. So we all expected this fight to be one of the best so far. There wasn’t much else to do besides train and look forward to fights, so the general consensus in the house was that we were all excited to see this matchup. 

However, looking back in retrospect, it’s no surprise that the things that happened, happened. Cody and Anthony were good friends. They always hung out together in the house, and they both played the role of partner in crime when it came to eating crap food. These two were ALWAYS struggling with their diets.

As a teammate of Anthony’s, we came to him concerned about this, and he assured us that he knew his body and that he would make the weight just fine.  I know that cutting weight is a very individual thing and every athlete can get away with cheating to different degrees. So, after Anthony insisted that he knew what he was doing, we all backed off and just let him do his thing. Cody wasn’t on our team, but he basically told everyone the same thing. “I’m a wrestler, I don’t miss weight” was said often. 

On the day of weigh-ins, as far as Team Rousey knew, everything was going fine. We didn’t have much reason to think that any serious problem was forming. We all thought that Cody might be having a hard cut, but I don’t think any of us really expected to have that meeting called in the gym that day.

We had gone to our morning training session, and once it was over and we were in our locker room, we were told we had to hang out in there for a bit and no one told us why. Immediately we all started assuming there had to be some sort of problem with Cody’s weight because the weigh-ins were that afternoon. Why else would Dana be at the gym when he normally wasn’t?

So after being on ice for almost an hour, we finally got called into the gym and we had seen Cody drinking water and stuff in the hallway. Right away we knew the fight was off. Weigh-ins were over four hours away and he’s drinking? It was obvious what had happened.

The only way to describe what happened was that Cody gave up. He made a choice. When it comes to fighting, I believe that the process of making weight is the real work. It’s the part that isn’t fun, it isn’t pleasant, but we HAVE to do it in order to be allowed to do the part that we all love.

My good friend, the Queen of Spades, says it best. “I get paid to make weight. I would fight for free.” There is no excuse for missing weight. I think Cody is a great guy, an incredible fighter and he was absolutely one of the biggest threats on the whole show…but he couldn’t make weight so none of that mattered, and that’s a real shame. 

The other unfortunate part of missing weight is that it doesn’t just affect you. It affects your opponent as well. Anthony had cut all the way to 136 at the time Cody gave up. By the time weigh-ins had arrived, he would have been sitting perfectly on weight. Cutting weight like that is extremely hard on your body. Fighters have it down to a science so it’s as healthy as possible, but it’s still not something you want to do to your body on a regular basis.

The whole thing put Anthony in a lose-lose situation in my opinion. His choices were either cut weight again in three days, fight and have less than a week to recover for the semifinals or take a bye. He made the intelligent choice and took the bye into the next round of the tournament, and none of us on the team really blamed him. It obviously wouldn’t be something that any of us would have bragged about, but we all understood. 

So, that left it to Peggy Morgan and Sarah Moras to save the day. Both ladies made weight and were ready to go at it. Peggy was finally acting like a normal person once she got some actual food into her system. For weeks she had lived off broccoli and berries so that she could make the weight. Quite honestly, if I would have been asked to make a prediction on a fighter missing weight, I would have probably said that Peggy would be the one to miss. She had more to cut than anyone else. But she proved everyone wrong and made the weight like a pro. 

The fight didn’t go at all like we were hoping. The ladies had some decent exchanges in the first part of the round. Sarah went for a takedown and Peggy defended it and continued the striking exchanges. However, Sarah timed a jab from Peggy and landed a solid takedown. Peggy did the right thing and sprawled great at first, but instead of clearing the distance, she actually just went ahead and pulled guard. Once this happened, Sarah just methodically worked on passing Peggy’s legs and eventually got mount, inflicted some ground-and-pound and then took the armbar for the finish. Sarah employed her game plan almost perfectly. We said from the beginning that it was just going to be a matter of who could impose their will, and Sarah proved to be the better fighter that day. 

As usual, as soon as the fights were over, it was time to determine the next matchups. However, this time it was for the semifinal fights. The coaches and Dana spoke to all the semifinalists and asked them who they wanted to fight. My favorite part of the episode was all the women asking to fight Jessica, and when it was Jessica’s turn her answer was that she would gladly fight any of them.

The final decision was that it would be Julianna Pena vs. Sarah Moras, Raquel Pennington vs. Jessica Rakoczy, Chris Holdsworth vs. Michael Wooten and Davey Grant vs. Anthony Gutierrez. For the first time since the show started, we would have a full week of no fights so that everyone could have plenty of time to prepare for their opponents and make weight. On Team Rousey‘s side, we were all motivated and focused for our teammates that had won their fights. Practices were productive and positive, and we all felt really good for what was to come next. 

 

**Tune in next week to hear Jessamyn’s thoughts on the continued tension between coaching staffs, more in-depth stories from the house and her thoughts on the fight between Chris Holdsworth and Michael Wootten.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Note: All quotes and material were obtained firsthand by Bleacher Report through a one-on-one between Jessamyn Duke and Bleacher Report’s Riley Kontek.

Living in the TUF house and dealing with the aftermath of a fight is a completely different situation than I’ve ever had to deal with before. Normally after a loss you are surrounded by your friends, family and the people closest to you, and they help you cope with the loss. Basically, they help pick you back up.

But at TUF, you don’t have those people. You can’t even talk to them on the phone. They are nothing but a memory at that point in time. After that loss, I was never more grateful for the team/family bond that those of us on Team Rousey had built. Those people were there for me during the hardest loss of my career and I’m forever thankful for the support they gave me. 

I got back to the house and took a shower immediately before finally got a good look at my battle wounds. My eyes were already black and swollen, my nose was pretty smashed (I thought it was broken, but as it turned out, it wasn’t), and my heart had pretty well been stomped on. Since she had to get stitched up, Raquel didn’t get back to the house till a little bit later.

When she did get back, she came straight into my room, and we gave each other a hug and she thanked me for the fight. I said, “You really brought out the best in me,” and she said that I did the same. I’ve never been able to talk with an opponent like that after a fight. It was a pretty crazy experience. Having my opponent’s respect after a fight definitely helped to soften the blow.

We spent the rest of the night feasting on ice cream, s’mores, every other treat we had denied ourselves over the last few weeks and just reliving the fight and appreciating what we just went through. 

On Father’s Day, Ronda Rousey and (assistant coach) Marina Shafir came over to the house and brought some gifts to all the daddies in the house, even the ones that weren’t on her team. I thought that this was an extremely thoughtful gesture and a testament to Ronda’s character.

Cody Bollinger had even been asking his coaches if they could maybe get him something for Father’s Day and they had told him no. So he was extremely appreciative when Ronda brought him a gift as well. It was a very emotional time for all the dads in the house and you could really tell that it was weighing heavily on their minds. 

Back in the gym, Team Tate had apparently come up with another not-so-clever “prank” targeting Edmond (Tarverdyan, another assistant) and Ronda that involved posting pictures all over the gym. At this point, it had been more than a week since Dana (White, the UFC president) asked both teams to knock it off and focus on the athletes, and this was the second time Team Tate tried to instigate.

Fortunately, Dana caught wind of it this time and came down to the gym to do damage control. We had showed up for practice, but we weren’t allowed in the gym and we had NO IDEA why. They just didn’t let us in on time like normal and Team Tate was already long gone. So we really had no idea what had happened. Dana did his best to try clean it all up, but he had missed one picture in the sauna and we finally figured out what had went down. 

Honestly, on our end, we don’t really know what happened past that. I know that Dana was sick of the “pranks” and that our coaches didn’t appreciate being poked at and not being allowed to respond. It caused a lot of tension, which is I guess what Team Tate’s goal was. I was just sick of all the childish stuff, honestly.

It seemed like a shallow attempt at being a “mean girl” on Miesha’s part and in my opinion was pretty immature. But in the end, nothing came of it. Dana dropped the hammer again and it was all back to business as usual.

Wootten vs. Josh…I was 100 percent confident in Wootten for this fight. I didn’t think it would be easy for him, but I knew he had the tools to win. The first round, Josh came out and did exactly what we expected him to do and he very nearly submitted Wootten for it. But Wootten kept his composure, worked out of some tough spots and by the end of the round had begun to find his range with Josh.

Second round, Wootten came out and threw a jab/right knee, which was the exact combo Edmond had told him to start the round with. You can even hear him screaming “Go, now, now!” when the round starts, and it landed cleanly and dropped Josh. I thought the fight might be over at this point but Josh showed a lot of resilience and survived the round. Now they were one and one.

Third round, Josh came out and threw a spinning back fist that resulted in him being taken down. Wootten finished the round on top raining down some serious ground-and-pound and I didn’t have a doubt in my mind that he had won the fight. It wasn’t easy, but he definitely proved he had the tools to beat Josh.

I was excited to see the next two matchups. Peggy vs. Sarah was gonna be interesting.

Peggy is the biggest 135-pound female fighter out there and poses some serious problems for any opponent based just on that. However, Peggy also had the most time to maintain weight and she was definitely working harder than anyone else to make sure that she made weight. Sarah’s game plan is no secret to anyone. She likes to take people down, ground-and-pound them and then submit them. So, winning the fight depended on Peggy’s ability to defend that. 

Cody and Anthony make for a crazy exciting matchup. Anthony is scrappy, tenacious and doesn’t quit, and Cody was pretty much viewed as one of the toughest guys in the house. I was expecting a scrap that would possibly rival the kind of fight that Raquel and I had. 

The dynamic in the house had started to change quite a bit at this point. Almost everyone had fought and the normal day-to-day routines had started to change. None of us really expected what was coming next. The whole experience was just impossible to predict. Stay tuned to find out why I say that. 

 

**Tune in two weeks from now (next week is a recap episode) to hear Jessamyn’s thoughts on the continued tension between coaching staffs, more in-depth stories from the house and her thoughts on the fights between Peggy Morgan and Sarah Moras, as well as the bout between Cody Bollinger and Anthony Gutierrez.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com