Amir Sadollah is one of 16 middleweights to fight their way into the house for a chance to win a contract with the UFC on Spike TV’s reality series “The Ultimate Fighter 7.”

Sadollah, who has advanced to the quarterfinals, is writing a weekly blog to give ocregister.com readers a behind-the-scenes look at everything that goes down in the house, during training and in the fights.

TUF 7 airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on Spike TV, and Sadollah’s blog posts immediately following each episode.

EPISODE 8

So I’m in the Team Forrest warm-up room with Luke and Klein, who is warming up for his fight and BOOM! A large foot, followed by a large angry Forrest comes bursting in.

It looks like it’s a pretty quick incident, but Forrest was irate for about five minutes, and it seemed like even longer. I had never seen Forrest angry before then, I didn’t know what to do, except possibly put my mouthpiece in.

I didn’t see or hear that Pat came in and apologized to Forrest, until this episode aired. I thought that was pretty cool of Pat, he’s usually a nice guy, we all did/said things on the show we normally wouldn’t.

When Forrest talked about netting Rampage, I didn’t want to be around for that. Rampage loves to joke, but I’ve seen him not take it so well when he’s the joke. I literally thought they would fight on the spot.

Rampage’s “Beecher looks like a chicken” comment had me rolling. I happened to be watching this episode with Beecher, which made it especially hilarious. Beecher laughed louder than me. Rampage had jokes for all of us the whole season, and they were usually pretty funny and kind of true. It was one of Rampage’s cracks I hoped would make the show.

Nick Klein was probably the most quiet guy in the house. He just seemed like a shy guy. Nick finally started to come out of his shell after he knew us for a while, revealing a very personable, funny guy. He was by no means the weak link on our team. His ground game is sick and his standup is very sharp and technical. He has a lanky, strong-body type, that is good for his weight class and style.

C.B. was probably the most highly esteemed fighter on Team Rampage. Up until this point none of us on Team Forrest had really seen a lot from C.B. His first fight to get in the house was over pretty quick, but by the way some of his teammates talked about him we didn’t think it would be an easy fight.

The fight between C.B. and Klein was exciting, to say the least. C.B. was always looking to improve position, and land hard shots. Klein was throwing up submission after submission. The contrast in styles made this a very high-paced, exciting fight.

Klein’s big mistake in the first round was going to the turtle position, and taking big shots before forcing a scramble.

The second round had a few brief exchanges on the feet, then back to great Jiu-Jitsu vs. great ground-and-pound. There was a point where you could see the outlook started to look bleak for Klein, and just when I was noticing this C.B. whipped around in a very quick transition and snatched a very quick, tight, guillotine.

I hated to see any of our team lose, and Klein is such a nice guy and great fighter, I was especially bummed. Klein was obviously disappointed too, but his post fight outlook was encouraging. Nick told me how he knew he could do better, and he told me exactly what he would do better. Nick knew he had better strikes than he showed, and he just needed to believe in them. While he fought his toughest fight yet, he wasn’t deterred. He saw he could do it and would next time.

What was uplifting about it, was he wasn’t telling me, he was really telling himself. This is a post-loss outlook not a lot of people have.

I wasn’t sure if Forrest was gonna go through with the shaved head, but he did. What was funny about it was before Rampage even knew why or how Forrest’s hair was cut he said, “It looks like Amir cut your hair.”

So in the fight picks, I was in this little room with Dana, Forrest and Rampage, telling them who I would want to fight. I don’t like asking for fights, I would rather just take them. So after five minutes of coaxing and me dodging questions, they got me to say Cale or Dante. To clarify, I was only saying that based on pure fight styles, it in no way reflected a desire to fight my friends. Turns out, I would fight a friend anyway.

Looking back, I should have been more suspicious of being matched up with Matt. Stylistically it was guaranteed to be explosive, and the fact that we were good friends sprinkled on a little drama. I think the only people that weren’t surprised with their matchups were Tim and C.B.

I never really saw any of Cale antagonizing C.B., but Cale has a sense of humor that could be taken as off putting if you don’t know him. Cale was another one of my close friends on the show, and one of the funniest guys there. He just wasn’t very loud, so if you didn’t hang out with him you may not know that most of what he says is just a goof.

My vote for quote of the episode is by Tim: “I’m gonna bring tears to the eyes of 16-year-old girls everywhere.”

A close second was Rampage saying that they should net Beecher and “make him go sit on some eggs.”

-Amir

To check out Amir’s blog for Episode 7, click here.

To check out Amir’s blog for Episode 6, click here.

To check out Amir’s blog for Episode 5, click here.

To check out Amir’s blog for Episode 4, click here.

To check out Amir’s blog for Episode 3, click here.

To check out Amir’s blog for Episode 2, click here.

Posted in: Amir's TUF 7 Blog • MMA • The Ultimate Fighter • UFC |

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