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By Zak Jensen, MMATorch Guest Blogger
Zak Jensen's back answering more questions from Torch Editor Jamie Penick on this week's fourth episode of The Ultimate Fighter and more. Make sure to send in questions for this feature to Zak at Tuf10TorchBlog@gmail.com!
In regards to Marcus Jones, Brenden Schaub stated that he was taking it more as a hobby and thus didn't know how to properly train and keep his body up during his time in the house, thus why he was up and down in terms of feeling ill or hobbling around, do you agree with that assessment?
No he played 6 years in NFL he got beat up during that time. He just over heated and needed to cool down.
Speaking of Jones, in the Team Rampage training session he was shown to be a beast of a physical specimen, not knowing his own strength against guys. You were one they showed getting banged up a little bit with an overzealous arm bar from Jones, but were you guys consciously worried about any serious injury while training with him and did he cause any injury in training?
He did not cause any serious ones. During a drill that we were working on timing with leg kicks and punching off them, Marcus kicked me so hard my leg swelled twice the size. He then just hit me with the arm bar you saw. He did not know his own strength, he was like a big kid.
Matt Mitrione was pegged as a snitch after telling Scott Junk the match-ups that Team Rashad had picked out. Did he give away all of those match-ups and can you say who you were told was to be your opponent?
I did not pay attention to it, it was high school drama, I was there to fight for my dream not to cluck like a bunch of hens.
Your team obviously would have been the beneficiary of that information since your team didn't have the pick at that point, so did it help you guys in training having an idea of who you might be fighting or did it even matter for you?
No because Scott told Justin and they knew we knew. So it did nothing for us.
Demico Rodgers was ultimately picked to face Brenden Schaub, what did you think of that match up when you first heard about it or when they announced it?
It was the match up that he wanted so I was fine with it. He said he had great ground and pound and had better subs and sub defense. He said he wanted Brendan and he got Brendan.
The fight itself was the best of the four we've seen thus far, which isn't saying much, but Demico seemed a bit rushed and out of his element when Schaub was able to reverse his mount attempt and wound up getting caught in the anaconda choke. What were your thoughts on the fight then and also watching it back now?
He said he was a good wrestler and the first thing a wrestler knows and is good at is hand control. When Brendan went for the choke he had a front head first and to stop that you attack the hands and fight for hand control. I was sad that he lost but he should have stayed in side mount.
What was the reaction from the team when Rampage stormed off yet again after a fight, and it was Team Rashad there lifting up Demico's spirits after the loss?
It showed what kind of "coach" Rampage is. He is a great guy and great fighter but not a coach
Rampage as a coach is coming off terribly on television right now, and his instructions to Demico to "score points" didn't seem to be the types of things that need to be shouted out by a coach in a fight. He thus far hasn't been shown to be a very good leader, but is this a case of a little bit of negative editing or was it really that bad there through the first four fights?
Lets just put it this way, where were the coaches before Demico's fight? At lunch. They showed up 20 min before the fight.
Did it turn to desperation mode for Team Rampage after going down 4-0?
We knew we were now behind the 8 ball and needed to what ever we could to salvage the last 4 fights.
[Zak Jensen photo provided by Spike TV]
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