Nick Ring’s Ultimate Fighter 11 Blog: Episode Nine

Chuck Is Ranting Again

I remember being there for this little tirade; to experience how intense Chuck was about Tito was actually quite amazing because of the kind of contempt that Chuck had for Tito. It was pretty apparent that Chuck spends enormous amounts of energy thinking about Tito. He was bitching about Tito like nobody’s business. It was just pure and unfiltered hate that Chuckie-boy was dumping on us about our coach. Believe me when I say that it was real and not just made for television.

Chuck was so mad that he was twitching. He was pacing around like a psycho as he went into story after story about how much he wanted to punch Tito’s lights out. I didn’t totally understand Chucks desire to beat on Tito (yet again). I figured that knocking him out twice would have been enough to satisfy all of those savage desires, but apparently not. I was wondering why he wanted to knock him out yet again. Seems a little like beating a dead horse at this point.

Tito is my coach, but I definitely didn’t want to take sides in this little war of egos.To inspire so much hate there had to be a lot going on behind the scenes and I didn’t really want to get involved.

Seth Versus Brad

Wow — what a match!

Seth was very dominant with his body triangle from the rear and his attacks for the first majority of the round. Tavares was showing some good ground and pound from top and was using really good pressure (despite almost getting caught in a triangle). On the stand-up Tavares went for a flying knee and slipped, and Seth soccer kicked Tavares in the face. I know that for Seth it was just an accident and it was just a “heat of the moment” situation. Accident or not, that did not help keep the emotions between the coaches under control outside of the octagon.

I was sitting right beside Court McGee when everybody was barking at each other and we gave each other a look like “this is stupid.” And yes, it was pretty stupid. Tito yelled at Attonito and then Chuck ran over without hesitation to punch Tito. Chuck was looking for any excuse to flip on Tito anyway so this was good enough.

Jake Shields was also on Tito like stink on shit and was yelling “fuck you Tito! I’ll fight you Tito!” It was quite uncharacteristic of Jake. I had always found him to be mild-mannered and to see him flip-out was actually pretty intimidating.

I was surprised to see things simmer down because I was positive that punches were going to be thrown at one of us on the red team who were acting as human shields for our coaches. I think you had to be there to really appreciate the insanity of the situation, but the video does a pretty good job of summing it up.

Tito Pulls Out

Behind closed doors after the little melee (or at least almost melee), Dana pulls Chuck into the office to tell him that Tito is pulling out of their fight. Obviously Chuck was pissed off over this. He had already predicted that Tito would pull out before fighting him and, unfortunately, Chuck was correct. But in Tito’s defense, your neck is your neck, and it really isn’t a good idea to fight under those circumstances – being paralyzed is bad and your health needs to be first.

Knocking Tito out will have to be another day, I guess. Sorry Iceman.

Until next time, Nick Ring signs off.