Randy Harrison
The second episode of this season of The Ultimate Fighter: Heavyweights is in the books and Nokaut.com's Ultimate Fighter 10 blogger Zak Jensen is back for week two! He's giving his thoughts on the fight between Wes Shivers and James McSweeney, the team's reaction to the decision, what he thinks of Kimbo and Roy Nelson being chosen to fight each other, how he felt about the confessional interviews and what was the best way to get the food that they wanted in the house. Let's get to Zak's thoughts on week two of The Ultimate Fighter season ten, The Heavyweights!
Nokaut.com: Where were you watching the show this week?
Zak Jensen: I was watching the show last night at Hooters in Austin, TX and it was great to be out of my home state and have people noticing me and getting to talk to the people that were there. It was a really nice experience.
Nokaut.com: Both fights from the first two episodes took place on the same day. Was there any gap between the two or was it just both fights back-to-back?
Zak Jensen: There was about a twenty minute break because the doctors had to go check Abe out and see how bad the cut really was. All of the coaches were out there and everything and Wes (Shivers) was just chilling out in the locker room by himself so we had to go and get him warmed up again before he fought. It was about twenty minutes or a half an hour or so between the two fights.
Nokaut.com: What were your thoughts about the Shivers/McSweeney match and when it was announced and did you feel like it was a good pick?
Zak Jensen: I thought it was a good pick because Wes is a big, strong, athletic guy and a lot of his fights, he gets his hands on someone and they're done. Whether it's with a punch or with a takedown like he had with James in the beginning and just finishing them off. James, we all heard about him being a devastating K-1 striker and all this stuff and all he did was kick him in the leg and run. He actually turned his back and ran, so it was kind of hit-and-run. Those leg kicks can take a lot out of you and if you have to keep chasing someone that's just kicking you in the leg...I think Wes getting tired is understandable, but James getting tired was just from him running all over the damn place. It was definitely not an impressive fight, but I definitely think it was one round each and they should have gone to a third.
Nokaut.com: What was the mood of the team getting ready for Wes' fight after seeing Abe get beaten down like he did in the first fight?
Zak Jensen: We just put it out of our mind. We already knew that we had lost control for the next pick, so it was more of a "let's win this one to even it up and keep some pride going". It wasn't like we were that close to anyone yet where it felt like you lost your buddy, it was more about our team just lost, let's support Wes and let's get a win.
Nokaut.com: Based on the first few minutes of the show, did you feel like Kimbo was getting special treatment from the coaches in the training sessions or did everyone get that same kind of work?
Zak Jensen: You saw the thing with "everyone go along the line except Kimbo, cause we got some specialness for ya..". He needed the most work out of everyone that was on the team because of his complete lack of experience on the ground and with wrestling. He's a street brawler and that's his thing and Rampage obviously connected with that and wanted to take him under his wing and that's what you guys saw there.
Nokaut.com: Did that rub anyone on the team the wrong way or was it just chalked up to him needing the help more because of his inexperience?
Zak Jensen: We all knew it was the Kimbo show. He's there and as you saw with the first episode we had ratings records and this next episode might surpass that record because Kimbo's actually fighting so we knew he was going to get more attention. I mean, it is what it is. You just have to take what you can from your experience and work harder. It was annoying, but it didn't really bother me.
Nokaut.com: We didn't really see a lot of what happened in the house or in training outside of Kimbo, Wes and James, so tell me a little bit about what was going on in that time period. Any interesting stories from the gym or the house that didn't make it to air?
Zak Jensen: No, not really. It was basically the same stuff you would have seen in the first episode because both fights were picked on the same day and they fought the same day. It was just more about people getting acclimated to the house and finding their niche in the house. It was more getting to know everybody so there wasn't really a lot that they cut out in the house because people were just trying to get comfortable and get in the groove with training. It's a set schedule and basically the first week was trying to fall into the schedule and hit the ground running.
Nokaut.com: Go ahead and run me through a typical day like that because I've always been curious about how things are scheduled daily during the Ultimate Fighter tapings.
Zak Jensen: We get two practices at the training center a day. Team Rashad had the early-morning practice and we had ours right after theirs. I believe it was around ten o'clock, but I'm not exactly sure of the time. They were two hours and it took about forty-five minutes to get there from where the house was. So we'd get back from training, eat lunch, take a nap maybe and then go to the late training session, come back, hang out for a little bit and talk or something and then go to sleep. Later on, we started doing the three-a-days when we'd start running in the morning and that would make the days even longer than that. We'd get up around six and go for about a two, two-and-a-half mile run, and then we did stairs and things later on. It was definitely an experience to be running at 6:30 or 7:00 AM and it's already about 85 degrees. I'm from Minnesota and it gets about 85 degrees when the sun is at its highest point. It was fun and it was the best training that I've ever had, but it took about a week to fully get into the swing of things.
Nokaut.com: Did you feel a little better seeing Wes do so well early on knowing that you weren't going to see a repeat of the first fight where Abe just got beaten up for ten minutes?
Zak Jensen: Yeah, as soon as Wes took James down and got in that position and was going for the submission, we were all thinking that he was strong enough and in a good enough position to where we're going to get at least one win and Wes was going to rip his arm off. James somehow wiggled out of it and got back up on his feet and I think we were all thinking about what else could go wrong. That's when the leg kicks started and it was just like chopping down a big oak tree. When your legs are gone it's hard to do anything. The kick in the groin was definitely an accident because they were both kicking at the same time, but I think everyone was kind of happy that it happened. As you can see from the pre-fight interview and the post-fight interview, James is borderline arrogant. I mean there's confidence and then there's arrogance and he flirts with that line and in my opinion he's over on the arrogant side, so it was nice to see him get knocked down a notch. It was definitely strange that you had two judges go 20-18, 20-18 and then a third goes 19-19. I thought it should have gone to the third round, our coaches thought it should have and even some of Rashad's guys thought that it should have gone to the third round. I don't know how a third round would have went with both guys being so gassed, but they deserved to have that opportunity.
Nokaut.com: Can you see anywhere in that fight where you could see where the judges would have given both rounds to James like they did?
Zak Jensen: No, especially after that first round where Wes took him down and was looking at the sub and all of that. The second round was where he just kicked and ran and even then he got taken down a few times too. He had the striking offense in the second round, but I can't really see any way that that could have happened. Maybe if they gave it as a draw one round and James won one round, because James won one round, but I think that Wes won one round too. I don't see any way that he could have won both rounds.
Nokaut.com: When Wes took the mount and just held on to James for the first few seconds, were you guys politely suggesting to him that he should start throwing some elbows or punches?
Zak Jensen: Politely would not be the correct word to use. (laughs) We were screaming at him to just throw elbows, hammerfists, punches, anything and we were screaming at the top of our lungs just trying to motivate him to get that extra burst of energy to finish the fight and pound him out.
Nokaut.com: Obviously we saw Wes' reaction to how things ended up, but what did the team think about the judge's decision when they announced that McSweeney won that fight?
Zak Jensen: The air was just taken out of everybody. Everyone was just despondent after that that we weren't even vocal about it. We all just kind of quietly walked back to the locker room and we all pretty much felt like it sucked.
Nokaut.com: Did you guys have a pretty good idea that Kimbo was going to be next on the chopping block now that Rashad could pick the fight?
Zak Jensen: Yeah, I think everyone knew that Kimbo had the big target on his back. No one really knew who it was going to be to fight him, so the Roy pick was a little interesting because him being their most well-rounded guy, you'd think that they would have put him in against our weakest well-rounded guy because of Kimbo's reputation as a street brawler. He definitely had the most work to do out of everyone on our team, so the fact that they chose Roy to fight him was a little interesting. I would have thought that they would have taken someone with more of a wrestling background and less experience and used Roy against one of our more experienced guys like Wes Sims or Scott Junk. I thought they might have put Justin Wren or even Brendan Schaub against Kimbo because he's got some good jiu-jitsu. The way that they chose Roy was the more interesting pick because we all knew that Kimbo was going to be the third guy. We knew they were going to pick Kimbo as quick as they could so he wouldn't have two or three weeks extra to train on the ground or wherever before his next fight.
Nokaut.com: Did you feel like it might have been overkill on their part by taking someone who was the best fighter on their team against someone who is still a bit of an unknown entity in terms of fighting skills?
Zak Jensen: Yes and no because they want to keep control and they want to keep stacking the odds in their favor so they can keep picking the fights. If you can take someone with that much experience and put them against someone who doesn't have that much, that's a smart coaching tactic. If it would have been someone who just started completely, like someone like Demico who only has four amateur fights, it might have been considered overkill, but because Kimbo has the power that he does and has the name. Mike Wessel talked in the confessional after the fight was picked about how he disappeared after the Petruzelli fight and he could have just been training this whole time, so I think it was a smart pick from the coaches' point of view.
Nokaut.com: Was there anything else we didn't see when Rampage was talking to the team in the locker room or did we pretty much get the gist of his motivational speech?
Zak Jensen: It was pretty much the gist of it. He was definitely pissed about it not going to a third round and it just went to him saying that we were definitely the underdogs in this thing and he was talking about how the last time he coached it was against Forrest, the first guy that won the show and now he's coaching against the guy that won the second time. He said that we just have to go to work and turn it around and show them that we're the better team here. It was basically what you saw plus that little bit extra.
Nokaut.com: You can see everyone sitting around and talking, what kinds of things were being discussed?
Zak Jensen: Just kind of trying to motivate each other and I mean we all knew it was going to be Kimbo so we were just talking to him and telling him to be ready.
Nokaut.com: You mentioned the confessional interview earlier. Take me through how they set those up and how those end up fitting into the schedule you were talking about.
Zak Jensen: Basically one of the producers would come up and ask if you wanted to do a confessional or if there was a specific thing in the house or in the gym that happened and he wanted you to talk about it, he'd tell you to come and do a confessional. If you notice, it's been the same house for the last three or four seasons and there's a fake wall that cuts off a home theater that's part of the house. That's where the confessionals are. That little bamboo fence that you see on the outside, you go through a little door there and then back through another little door into the house, so you kind of go out, around and then in. It's kind of funny because it's really dark in there and it's nice to get away because it's quiet. You're still on camera, but you don't have one following you around. It was nice to go in there because you had a little bit of privacy, even though you have someone asking you questions. It was mostly them just asking certain questions about fight predictions or something that happened in the house or your thoughts on the experience so far. Sometimes they just ask you what's on your mind, so it was like if you needed to blow some steam off, you could pick up what they called the Batphone and call one of the producers and say "I need to talk about something" and they'd just come down and get you. It was basically like an audio journal for the day.
Nokaut.com: This is kind of a different question, but what is in the house in terms of food and toiletries and things of that nature. Is it stocked with everything and you guys just pick out of what's there, or is there a way to request things that you like or is it somewhere in between?
Zak Jensen: Well, the house was stocked with all of the staples like pasta, rice, oatmeal, water, juice, bread, sandwich meat, all of that kind of stuff. They pre-stocked it and then anything else that we wanted, we wrote out on a list and they'd have it the next day or a couple of days after. We started a running joke that if we wanted to make sure we got something, we'd just write it on Kimbo's list. I mean I had wrote Fruity Pebbles down for five days and I finally got them, but then I thought about it and I put it on Kimbo's list to see what would happen and the next day, boom, it was there. So we were all a bit like "ahhh, now we know what's going on". It was a bit of a running joke, even though they said that they just couldn't find them. Abe was wanting Count Chocula or some cereal that they haven't made in like forever and he'd been wanting them for a long time and they kept telling him that they don't make it anymore except on Halloween. He just kept writing it down and writing it down. It was just funny and we made fun out of the whole experience of having to wait for something. As far as toiletries go, they had soap dispensers in the shower and kits for us with tylenol, asprin, toothbrushes, floss and all of that. They had stuff there for us because you can't just pack six weeks of stuff like that so that was cool. They had one washer and one dryer so we all had to take turns washing. There was like the pool and the hot tub and the basketball court to keep us occupied when we weren't training, but like in the beginning we didn't have cards so we had to make our own. No music obviously for licensing issues. You had everything you could possibly need except for some of the basic stuff. Like I never thought twice about a deck of cards and they never crossed my mind, but when you can't have one and there's nothing else to do, you really want one. They make it so that you have to converse and interact so that's why there's a lot of those things that we're not allowed to have because then they worry about guys just going into their room and reading or going and playing cards by themselves or things like that. It's more so that the show doesn't get hurt. We convinced them that after we had made our own deck of cards that there were really good conversations going on while we were playing so we basically promised that if the conversation stopped, they could take the cards so once we did that, they were willing to give us the deck of cards. If we asked for something and explained ourselves and promised not to abuse it, they'd usually give it to us.
Nokaut.com: You talked about the Fruity Pebbles and Count Chocula and all of that before. Were breakfast cereals one of the main things on everyone's list or were there other things that people put down as requests more often?
Zak Jensen: Well, they have a generic stock of cereal and stuff, but things like the Fruity Pebbles, I mean I've been eating that since I was a kid, so that's why I did it, but there were some people doing it that way with their favorite cereals. Lots of times though it was just guys who were like "I want a really good steak today, I think I'll write that down". I mean I ordered sushi every day, a lot of guys ordered sushi every day. Stuff that you normally wouldn't be eating because sushi is expensive so most people can't have it every day. Kimbo would start getting really specific and ask for like sixteen twelve-ounce T-bone steaks because he would grill and we'd all fix stuff and take turns cooking. When we were in the house, we all tried to get along and keep the house clean. They actually came in and said this was the cleanest they had ever seen the house because usually by the fourth or fifth day it smells and there's flies everywhere because they just don't care. They thought it was going to be like that with the heavyweights, but we didn't want to live in a pigsty. I mean I was twenty-six and the third youngest guy in the house and usually there's guys that are like twenty-two or twenty-three and that might be why the house gets like that. Roy's thirty-two and there's a lot of guys that were over thirty in the house so there was a lot of grown men and a lot of mature people in the house and I think that helped a lot. With us taking turns cleaning and cooking and all of that, there were certain people that have never cooked anything and pitched in and there were a few people that just never cleaned. It's not like everyone was like that. If everyone had been like that it would have been a little bad, but since it was just two or three it was alright.
Nokaut.com: Were there set jobs for people or did everyone kind of rotate through in terms of the cleaning and the cooking and all of the house stuff?
Zak Jensen: It kind of rotated like we all ate at different times so it was like we would make sure that they had clean dishes to eat if they made sure that we had clean dishes when it was our time to eat. It just went back and forth. Demico did a lot of the dishes and we'd all want to help and kind of join in. I cooked some pot roasts, Roy did like taco night, Scott Junk made some really good ahi tuna with some shrimp and stuff. We all kind of cooked what we knew how to cook. Kimbo was really good with sauces and he could grill a mean steak so it was everyone doing stuff. Matt Mitrione cooked once and we all looked at him and told him that he was never going to cook again. (laughs) You can cook for yourself, but don't cook for any of us. It was horrible. Everyone pretty much took turns with stuff and it was good. There was one little thing in the house where if you took someone's food, just let them know and put it on the list. Some guys were just acting like it was just food and it didn't matter and we felt like if we put it on the list, it's because we wanted it. We just wanted to make sure that if they used it that they put it on the list so that we wouldn't go to the fridge and wonder where our food was. That happened a few times and that was Jon that did that. I told him every time that it didn't matter to me about the food as long as he replaced it on the list. Kimbo was the same way saying that if you're going to use it, just write it down if you used the last of it. We were all really mature about that part of it, which was nice.
Nokaut.com: Just out of curiosity, what was it that Matt fixed that was so terrible that he was forbidden from cooking again?
Zak Jensen: It was shrimp. I mean it's not that hard to cook them, you shell them and you season them. I don't know what he did, but it was horrib..I mean it was bad..I can't even describe how bad it was. He was talking about how he knew how to cook this stuff and we were all like Matt, don't touch another thing in the kitchen ever again, please.
Nokaut.com: Where will you be checking out the show next week?
Zak Jensen: Right now I'm not sure. I mean I might be back in Minnesota or I might actually be back in Texas again because it's Kimbo fighting next week and I was the guy with the best wrestling on my team so I'm the one that has to show him how to stop a shot and do all of that stuff. I hope I get a little more air time than I did this week and I hope that the editing monster doesn't make me look like a bad wrestler to make someone else look like they're a good wrestler. (laughs). They might have me back down here though. This is my first time in Texas and it's been great and if they want me to come back I'll definitely come back. I just kind of go where I'm told, almost like when you're a fighter and you fight when you're told to fight, I just go where they tell me to go. (laughs)
Nokaut.com: If there's anything that you wanted to add to this blog, go ahead.
Zak Jensen: Thanks for having me back and everyone should tune in next week to see Kimbo fight Roy. It's going to be a great fight and it's going to be fun to see how Kimbo has progressed.
Nokaut.com: Alright, thanks Zak for joining us again. Enjoy the show next week and we'll be talking to you then.
Zak Jensen: Great, thanks very much.
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