(Believe it or not, this is how AZ rolls, baby, all day.)

Every Thursday, Team Nogueira member Efrain Escudero blogs his reactions to each new episode of The Ultimate Fighter, exclusively on CagePotato.com. Don’t forget to check out the new fan section on EfrainEscudero.com, where you can interact with other EE fans and Efrain himself.

***

During this week of The Ultimate Fighter we had a lot of drama. First we were watching UFC 84: ILL WILL, and it was the only time we get to see television the entire time we are there. Junie and Shane start drinking, and I mean drinking. Since we’ve been in the house we have noticed that when Junie drinks we have to be on the look out and watch each other’s backs because he tries to fight us. Right after the angry Junie comes the crying Junie, and we don’t understand why.

As the fights continue I try to get Shane mad by telling him that BJ Penn was going to lose. I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but I just wanted to make it an exciting fight, and try to get Shane more excited about watching BJ win. That was not the smartest thing I could have done because he had been drinking and he was teaming up with Junie, so I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. As the night progresses, Junie tries to fight with Kyle. I don’t know why he would ever try to even attempt that because Kyle would kick his ass if it really came down to it. So Junie throws a glass at Kyle and the damn thing breaks and cuts him. Luckily for Kyle it didn’t cut him badly and even luckier for Junie, Kyle could restrain himself.

After all the things that happened with Kyle and Junie I thought for sure that Junie was out and on his way back home. After this Shane started to tell me that he was going to triangle me if I pick him to fight first against me. I think he did this because he was scared of me at the time and he was trying to make me scared of him; the only thing that his tactics did was make me laugh. This went on for about three hours with him calling me out while I just laughed, and that made him even madder so he decided to pick a fight against me in the house. I just swallowed my pride and walked away because I am not getting kicked out because of this guy.

So Dana comes and we all think he is sending Shane and Junie home, but he lets both guys stay. I had no problems with that because they talked shit and now its time for them to back it up. I wanted to fight Shane so I asked Coach Nogueira to allow me to fight him, and he agreed. At the weigh-in I saw that Shane was looking more nervous than I was, because I was on a mission to kick his ass for making me look bad on TV.

Fight day. I come out to the cage, I’m looking at him on the other side and then the bell rings. I had hate for him at the time so I wanted to make him look bad. We exchanged some good blows in the first round. In the second round I heard my coaches yell “one minute!” so I had to do something and do it fast. I never want to leave it up to the judges because you never know what the hell can happen, so I set him up for a triangle. Once I baited him in and got it I wasn’t letting go because he said he was going to finish me with a triangle, and it was the other way around. Funny how the world works. That made me very proud of my coaches for working with me on my technique. After that, here comes Junie trying to be on TV once again, jumping into the cage trying to call me out. So now I have a bigger fish to fry.

EfrainEscudero.com