John Dodson's TUF 14 Sherblog, Part 3

---

“The Ultimate Fighter” Season 14 bantamweight John Dodson (www.twitter.com/JohnDodsonMMA) will blog for Sherdog.com all season long, giving his thoughts, reactions and behind-the-scenes insights on TUF 14. “The Ultimate Fighter” airs Wednesday on Spike, 9 p.m. ET/PT.

First things first ... I forgot to let everyone know about the nicknames we all had. We all got our nicknames as soon as we won our fights to get into the house. No one got to choose, and we had to deal with it until we all figured out everyone’s real names. Plus, it was a fun way of breaking the ice between one other and seeing who you would get along with.

Here’s the list:

• John Albert: Encino Man (looks like Brendan Fraser)
• Johnny Bedford: Splinter (oldest on the show)
• Roland Delorme: Sorcerer’s Apprentice (looks like Jay Baruchel)
• T.J. Dillashaw: Vision Quest (looks like Shute from the movie)
• John Dodson: Beetlejuice
• Josh Ferguson: Brokeback
• Louis Gaudinot: Jersey Green
• Dustin Pague: Vanilla Ice
• Stephen Bass: Peaches
• Dennis Bermudez: Crixus (from “Spartacus” on Starz)
• Diego Brandao: Boom
• Marcus Brimage: Darkness
• Bryan Caraway: Scareaway
• Hamid Corassani: Borat
• Dustin Neace: Triple Sac (has three testicles)
• Steven Siler: Scuba Steve (has webbed toes)

Before the first practice after the first win for Team Mayhem, our coach, Jason “Mayhem” Miller, came in with some water noodles. I didn’t know what was going on, but I figured something was up because he was walking towards me. He wanted to make sure that we all knew the first rule of fighting: to keep yourself protected at all times. I heard him say that, and the first thing that came to mind was to defend myself and get a weapon. I wish a certain boxers could have been a part of that practice. No need to mention any names. It was a good way for us to get ready for the day and to just have fun -- something I was looking forward to while being in the house.

Fighting is serious work and you have to focus on the task at hand or you’ll lose, but why can’t you just let loose and have fun? Don’t we fight because we want to have fun and enjoy what we do for a living? I don’t know about you all, but that’s how I was raised: to have fun with everything you do because if you aren’t having fun, then you might want to think about quitting.

While we were in practice, the opposing coach, Michael Bisping, decided to pull off a prank of his own. He took all the tires off Mayhem’s car and put them in our dressing room. It was a tire for a tire, I guess.

I finally got to see part of the meltdown between Diego and Marcus. While I was in the house, I didn’t see any of it, but I know how Diego likes to spar and I knew that something was going to happen sooner or later. Watching these two spar and get after it, it looked like how Diego and I train normally when we’re back home at the Greg Jackson-Mike Winklejohn gym in New Mexico -- every day. I didn’t know what was going on, until I saw Marcus bump him and I knew that something was up. It was going to get bad because I told everyone the first day we all were in the house that “Diego will kill one of y’all if y’all try something.” Diego felt like Marcus was trying to go hard, so he went hard and it ended up turning into a real fight. Now, I was back at the house when all this happened, so I had to hear about it when the other team came back.

Diego was pissed off and told me that he didn’t like the black guy because he was trying to take his head off. He was still upset, and I’m not going to pretend that I knew what he was saying half of the time because he was speaking Portuguese -- and I don’t know any Portuguese. I went to Marcus to find out his side of the story and to see what was up because I kind of had an idea. I know how Diego is, but I wanted to make sure that I got it right and that I could get everything back on track. He told me what was going on, and I had to get them to a common understanding so that Diego could calm down and focus on why he was there. He wanted to go home, not back to Albuquerque, but back home to Brazil so that he could see his family again. He hadn’t seen them since he came to the U.S., and the show was his chance to make the money he needed to go back home and see everyone. I wasn’t going to let that incident be the reason for him not to do his best in the house.

There were only three flyweights in the house, so we all stuck together. We had our own little balcony that we claimed as our own. We marked our spot and were hoping to set the bar for the flyweights. We made a pact before team picks that we would help out each other. It just so happens that the people that I hung out with the most got picked to be on the other team. I knew that was going to be a bad situation. I got picked by the team that I wanted to be on, but I didn’t get the teammates that I wanted to hang out with.

If we look at the way it went down, there were five members member of Death Leprachauns. Yeah, I know it is spelled wrong, but none us in the house knew how to spell “leprechaun” at the time, so we left it the way it was. Then, Bedford chimed in and told us how it was supposed to look after we had already written it on the board. Whatever. Anyway, there were five Death Leprachauns on Team Bisping and only me on Team Mayhem. You all can guess how this went down. I helped them to help me.

Who were the members of DL? Well, I’m glad you asked. DL was me, Gaudinot, Ferguson, Corassani, Brimage and Brandao. We were grabbing life by the horns, which was the motto for the DL. When the time to pick the fight came around, the DL members knew who was going to be chosen because of me. I tried to give Josh a fighting chance. He knew who he was fighting. If they knew who they were fighting, they said they would help me get my first choice of the fight I wanted in the house.

Do you want to know who I wanted to fight? Well, you’ll have to wait and find out if they helped me get the fight I wanted for the information they were given.