Exclusive Interview: ‘TUF 7′ Finalist CB Dollaway

(CBD, reppin’ the MTX Audio Fight Team.)

Pretty much everyone had CB Dollaway as a lock to get into the Ultimate Fighter 7 finale, and the former All-American wrestler from Arizona State seemed to have it clinched on last night’s episode, kicking Amir Sadollah’s ass all over the Octagon. And then it happened — an armbar in the third round put a shocking end to the fight, and seemed to derail Dollaway’s dreams of making it into the UFC. Good thing Jesse Taylor can’t handle his liquor, because now the Team Rampage standout has a chance to battle Amir again, this time for all the marbles. Talk about drama. In this exclusive Q+A, Dollaway chats with CagePotato about his rematch with Sadollah, the drawbacks of having Rampage as a coach, Jesse Taylor, and the bullshit one has to endure when living in the TUF house.

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CAGEPOTATO.COM: What do you think went wrong at the end of your semi-final match with Amir?
CB DOLLAWAY: I think conditioning came into play. We’d been fighting two-round fights previously, and it kind of slipped my mind that it was gonna be a three-round fight. Towards the end of the third round I was just exhausted, and I got sloppy. I wasn’t doing things right, and he was. He kept his composure and caught me in that armbar. I definitely think I was controlling the whole fight, and I believe I was ahead on the scorecards, but you have that mental lapse for a minute and the other guy capitalizes on it.

How confident are you that you’ll have him figured out when you fight him again?
Pretty confident. I believe I took care of the mistakes I made in the first match. I think it should be a similar fight, but with me winning at the end. He’s a hard competitor to finish — I already know that from fighting him once — so I’ve taken measures to make sure I’ll be in great condition.

What did you miss the most while you were trapped in the Ultimate Fighter house?
The freedom, I guess. We were told what to do and when to do it, and we didn’t have access to anything. You can’t call anyone, you can’t get on the Internet and browse around, you can’t go to the mall — you’re just there. In a sense, it’s like being in jail.

We’ve heard a lot about how some of the castmembers were made to look a certain way on the show through editing. Jeremy May says he wasn’t really that much of an asshole. Amir told us the “confessional” scenes involved very leading questions. How accurately do you think you were portrayed on the show?
It seemed like they portrayed me to be a cocky asshole, and I’m not really like that. I just want to be confident and I don’t want to put negative thoughts in my head before I fight. They basically edit out everything you say except for the parts where you’re being confident…

Or when you’re referring to yourself in third-person.
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BetUS.com Presents: MMA Betting for ‘Tards

(Photo courtesy of UFC.com.)

Nothing amps up the drama of watching a sporting event like knowing you have a little extra riding on the outcome. UFC 85 is tomorrow, and for me, that “little extra” is the possibility that I’ll be hard-barfing afterwards. For the rest of you, it might be throwing a few 20-spots down on your favorite fighters. If you still have some disposable mad-money left from your economic stimulus check, why not open an account at BetUS.com? And if you don’t know the first thing about what to do when you’re there, read on…

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Let me first begin by saying thanks to the Bens for allowing me to take time away from eating the souls of virgin gypsy orphans to come on here and try to corrupt the minds of the Cage Taters.

For those of you who are too damn lazy to know who I am, my name is Damon Durante, and I’m the host of BetUS Sports Radio, a series of sports betting-related podcasts. To review: BetUS.com is a sportsbook, I am their radio host.

I cover pretty much every sport you can bet on, but I’ll let you know that football is pretty much the Cat’s Cotton Pajamas around here and is essentially 90% of what we do. I friggin’ love all sports, but MMA is my secret mistress.

I have made it my personal goal to bring MMA as far to the forefront of sports wagering as I can; football might pay the bills, but MMA burns deep in my loins, to which the only soothing balm is more MMA. (There have obviously been others in my industry attempting to capitalize on the popularity of MMA using different tactics, but through sheer lameness they ended up sucking donkey pouch.)

Unfortunately the newness of mixed martial arts as a whole contributes to the betting naivety of most people. I mean we’ve all seen football point spreads since we were kids, but the appearance of money lines for MMA fighters is still seemingly non-existent. Without a doubt the #1 question I get asked is “What the #%*$ does ‘minus 200′ mean?”

That’s why I’m writing this bad boy; to turn you all into degenerate gambling bastards.

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Ben vs. Ben: The UFC 85 Argument

(Can Swick go from snoozefest to Fight of the Night?)

We’re at it again. In this edition, Cage Potato editors Ben Goldstein and Ben Fowlkes debate whether UFC 85 is worth the money, which match-up will provide the most fireworks, and who’s likely to get cut once this one is in the books.

Is this card worth buying on pay-per-view? If so, do you wait until the evening re-broadcast, or go ahead and blow your load on Saturday afternoon?

Fowlkes: For hardcore MMA fans, the phrase “worth buying” is almost meaningless. Of course we’re going to buy it. We’re suckers. We factor the cost of a pay-per-view or two into our monthly budgets without even thinking about the card.

For a casual viewer, UFC 85 may not be worth the trouble. The main event isn’t exactly compelling for most people, and much of the rest of card is tailored more for the British fans than the Spike TV crowd. Considering all the events that have been crammed together recently, less fervent MMA fans may take this Saturday off and spend time with their families or some stupid shit.

As for when you watch it, some purists might wait until the re-broadcast to simulate the experience they’ve grown accustomed to, but I love daytime drinking too much for that. Normal PPV’s don’t start until 10 pm on the East Coast, and that’s just a touch too late for my tastes. I love the idea of an afternoon of fights. It leaves my evening free to pursue other interests, such as nighttime drinking.

Goldstein: If I wasn’t independently wealthy, this would definitely be a “wait until the fights show up on RuTube” kind of event. To be fair, I think UFC 85’s main card has potential, but where “Bedlam” really suffers is the undercard — no stars, no exciting newcomers, and no fights that have any impact in the league outside of determining who will be sunk in the next wave of roster cuts. (Not that it makes much of a difference in terms of the pay-per-view broadcast, since they’ll only show the most exciting undercard fights anyway.)

Still, if you’re hardcore enough to shell out for this one, there’s no reason not to catch it live. In this day and age, you’d have to go to extreme lengths to avoid having the results spoiled for you before the re-broadcast — like not coming onto this site all day, which is pretty much retarded. When there’s an excuse to get blasted before dinner, the wise man takes it.

What will be the “Fight of the Night”?

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Photo Gallery: EliteXC “Primetime”

(The New York Badass struts into the abyss.)

Some visual highlights from my visit to the Prudential Center. Click photos for larger versions; hold cursor over photos for identifications. All images courtesy of BG/CagePotato.com, and may be reproduced with credit.

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Elite XC: Live And All Up In Your Grill

(Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle.)

Your long wait for MMA on network television has finally ended. It’s not pay-per-view, it’s not YouTube, it’s CBS, bitches. My fellow MMAholics, we done came up. Settle in, grab yourself a cold one, and prepare for your world to be changed forever — and that’s just the Busta Rhymes performance!

Click more to get your liveblog on. Refresh every few minutes for the latest witty remarks and harmful generalizations. Hit up the forums to share your precious opinion with the rest of the Potato Nation.

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Ben vs. Ben: The Elite XC Argument

(BG)
(BF)

Remember when you were a kid and your parents would argue and it was really loud and you got scared so you went to hide under the bed and cry until it was over? This is kind of like that. Except instead of your parents it’s Ben Goldstein and Ben Fowlkes, the two editors of Cage Potato, and we actually care about you. We’re still not coming to your Little League games, though.

Could James Thompson rain on the Kimbo Slice hype parade? If so, what then?

Fowlkes: Look, we all know Elite XC didn’t make this fight because they want to be in the James Thompson business. They brought him in because he’s knockout fodder, and also because he’s big and scary looking and to the average sports fan he seems like a monster. Kimbo beats him, then they sell Kimbo as a monster slayer. That’s their plan, no doubt about it.

That said, a guy like Thompson should never be completely counted out. He hasn’t looked good lately. This much is true. But when you’re 6′5″, and hovering in the 265 region, you’re never more than one good punch or knee away from victory. Even so, I have hard time imagining him winning this. His flash chin, his reliance on aggression over technique, that spells trouble.

If he were to win, well, Gary Shaw would cry. That’s the first thing that would happen. Then Elite XC would immediately begin hyping a lukewarm rematch. Basically, they’d lose a lot of steam. Almost all their steam, to the point where their steam levels would be dangerously low. Which is why Shaw will do anything short of leaping into the cage himself to stop it from happening.

Goldstein: It’s kind of a moot point considering there’s absolutely no way in hell that the Colossus will win this fight. MMA pundits talk about Thompson’s need to take the action to the ground against Kimbo — but since when was Thompson ever skilled on the ground? Just because Slice is a novice in MMA, it’s automatically assumed that Thompson’s jiu-jitsu is far superior? His brief stint at Xtreme Couture gave us hope that he’d be rounding out his game, but now he’s back in his comfort zone, working out at an outfit with the sadly appropriate name “London Street Fighters.”

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10 Questions With Kaitlin Young

(”I’m not a little girl by any means.”)

The hordes of screaming Gina “Crush” Carano fans who tune into the premiere of CBS’s “Saturday Night Fights” this weekend to see EliteXC’s poster girl kick some ass might be in for a seriously rude awakening. Carano’s opponent for the co-featured bout is Kaitlin Young, a 21-year-old Minnesota Martial Arts Academy product who famously knocked out three women in a one-night HOOKnSHOOT tournament last November; the combined fight time was just one minute and 45 seconds. We gave Kaitlin a call last night to ask her about rolling with dudes, the advantages she’ll have in her fight against Carano, and her shitty ‘91 Honda Accord.

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CAGEPOTATO: We recently posted the video of your “Caveman Training” at Athletic Performance Incorporated. Be honest — they took they engine out of that pickup truck you were pulling, right?
KAITLIN YOUNG: No, everything was as-is, just as it came from the factory. Honestly, it’s not as hard as it looks. The wheelbarrow is the real killer.

When did you know you wanted to be a competitive fighter?
It’s really all I ever wanted to do. I did Olympic-style Tae Kwon Do starting when I was 14, and I’ve enjoyed the fighting arts ever since then.

Are there enough women at Minnesota Martial Arts Academy to spar and roll with, or do you usually have to train with the guys?
There are a couple of other girls, but it’s mostly guys that I’m training with at this point. Greg Nelson and Tom Schmitz help me a lot. My boyfriend Ryan Murray is a big heavyweight pro Thai boxer, so he helps me with striking and pads, and some of the wrestlers from the University of Minnesota have been working with me too.

What else do you do when you’re not training for a fight?
This semester I was a full-time student at the University of Minnesota, studying kinesiology — exercise science, which kinda fits in — and I also do a bit of strength and conditioning coaching on the side at API.

You took your first pro loss in February, against Sara Schneider at a BodogFight event. What do you think went wrong?
She did a good job executing her game plan, so I don’t want to take anything away from her, but I think I made the mistake of following a good grappler to the ground when I’m a striker. I was winning pretty decisively on the feet, and I tried to pound her out and got caught in an armbar.

How do you think you’ll apply that lesson to Gina Carano? She comes from a Muay Thai background, but she’s at least serviceable on the ground.
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