Abe Wagner's Ultimate Fighter Blog: Jensen Has Worse Man-Boobs Than "Titties"

Following each episode of The Ultimate Fighter Heavyweights, Team Rampage member Abe Wagner will share his thoughts on what happened on camera and behind the scenes.

This week’s episode starts off showcasing Darrill’s drinking. I would have to say that was a bit of creative editing, from the standpoint of that the intervention probably happened on Day 3 that we were there, and this episode mostly takes place on about the third or fourth week of the experience.

Going into this fight selection, I was pretty sure that Team Rashad would pick Jensen because the winner of the sixth fight essentially gets to pick two fights for winning one. So it came as no surprise to me when they picked Zak, errrr, umm Linderman.

At the weigh in, at the Darrill/Rampage confrontation, Rampage said possibly the funniest thing he said the whole time on the show, but it was bleeped out to the point of not really being able to tell what was said. So, what was said in the “Fuck you, no fuck you” conversation was Rampage said “I’ll titty-fuck you”…which at the moment was pretty well-timed and hilarious. But you also have to see Darrill’s point; nobody would want to be called that in general, but especially on national television. It’s sometimes easy to view everyone as just a character on a show, but we are real people with real lives. Right now, what do you think the people that know Darrill are saying to him?

Then there was the when-will-Linderman-snap pool. Everyone, literally everyone had a day. In my mind, it was not a question of if, but when he would lose it; almost like Private Pile at the end of Full Metal Jacket: “I am in a world of shit, Joker!!!”

But the main thing is that no one else in the house would have literally just laid there while everyone was ripping into them. He calls it being a good person, but what he was doing is called being a victim; there’s no honor in allowing yourself to take punishment when you have the ability to defend yourself. If you don’t stand up for yourself, nobody else ever will.

I said leading into the fight that it was a battle of the two guys that we were waiting for to go crazy first. It’s pretty obvious why I said that about Linderman, but Rashad was right, Darrill did have that certain serial-killer-quietness about him. Couple with that the tattoo of a demon holding little girl’s severed head on his arm and an incident involving a baby bird (the video is online if you search for it) and it’s becomes clear why I said that.

In the training montage they show before the fight, when they are showing Jensen finally becoming “hardcore” and a “soldier”, if you watch, you see the coaches laughing as they cheer Zak on. This is because they told everybody to let him do well so that he could get some confidence. At one point you see Demico sprawl on a take down and literally flip over to his butt on purpose to give Zak the takedown. If you rewatch, you’ll see the coaches dying of laughter the whole time.

During the preflight warm up, you’ll note the differing motivational styles of the two coaches. Rashad focused more on positive talk and visualization while Rampage focused on Darrill’s physique and that alone. Making fun of the other guy doesn’t really build up a fighters mind state in my humble opinion. It’s also interesting to note also that in my opinion, had Jensen been on Team Rashad, his nickname would have been “Titties,” being that he was the only one there with worse man-boobs than Darrill. So you have to be able to appreciate the irony of Rampage making fun of Darrill about his breasts to Jensen while Jensen in fact has worse ones.

Then on to the fight. It went about the way I thought it would. It’s my opinion that Zak wasn’t really out-out, or asleep. If you watch right after the ref stops it, his hands move to his head and his head is resting on his forehead very comfortably. I think he drew inspiration from Wes Sims last week when he got passed out. It is my honest opinion that he faked being out. I’m sure the choke was tight, but based on how he acted afterward, there’s no way he was asleep. I’m not sure why he would fake that, but he did.

That’s it for this week. Next week is probably the best fight of the year, so I am personally looking forward to seeing it.