10 Legendary MMA Fighters You've Probably Never Heard Of

Tag: Gerald Harris

Gerald Harris’s ‘TUF 7′ Blog: A Rock and a Hard Face

Jesse Taylor pisses the hot tub, UFC Ultimate Fighter
(Jesse Taylor pisses his shorts on national television.)

Every Thursday morning, Team Rampage member Gerald Harris blogs his reactions to each new episode of The Ultimate Fighter 7 on CagePotato.com. Here’s what he had to say about last night’s ep, in which retard-strong (and retard-smart) Jesse Taylor pounded his way to victory, and Amir Sadollah and Matt Brown put on the best fight of the season.

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By now everyone should know that Jesse Taylor is for real. He’s not the most exciting fighter in the world, but he’s solid and gets the job done. I can’t hate, because I respect winners and he’s also a Team Quest fighter so I was rooting for him. Dante just laid there and took a beating. He’s a veteran in the game and also a brown belt under Ricardo Almeida, so I assumed that he would catch Jesse, but Jesse just punched the [blank] out of him for two full rounds.

Now, let me get to the action! Matt Brown vs. Amir Sadollah was crazy. That’s a fight that people would pay money to watch. I think the first round could be given to Brown for the aggression and last second takedown. Amir seemed to pick up steam in the second round, took Matt down, punished him from the top, and eventually sunk in a triangle choke. I liked the fight because it wasn’t a sloppy slugfest. Brown has a great boxing background and Amir showed his Muay Thai and ground game with the strikes and sub finish. It’s crazy that the more you pressure him, he gets stronger and doesn’t fold — that’s the quality of a good fighter. I can say the same about Brown plus he was very humble in his loss and showed respect for his opponent.

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Gerald Harris’s ‘TUF 7′ Blog: Episode 8

Rampage netted The Ultimate Fighter 7
(“The foulest stench is in the air / the funk of 40,000 years / And grisly ghouls from every tomb / are closing in to seal your doom.”)

Every Thursday morning, Team Rampage member Gerald Harris blogs his reactions to each new episode of The Ultimate Fighter 7 on CagePotato.com. Here’s what he had to say about last night’s ep, in which CB Dollaway got his first inevitable win and the quarterfinal matchups were announced.

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Let me start by apologizing for not speaking on the Yarbrough-Schultz fight in last week’s blog. I was really going through some things — it’s hard to walk around knowing the outcome of the show and holding it from your friends and family. You’re drowned with questions and angry people wanting to know what happened, and also claiming to know the outcome. Last week was a shock to a lot of people close to me but not to many outside of that circle. I learned a lot from the experience and took the loss as motivation. I was also mistaken on my words threatening to hurt Amir after the bout. I was being very sarcastic and I’m very humble about the incident.

Now, it was no surprise that CB was fighting Nick Klein this week. The only surprise was “who the hell is Nick Klein?” Well, let me fill you in. Klein is a tough dude — we were actually respecting him a lot, because he was very quiet in the house. Quiet people are unpredictable and are usually hiding something…like talent. Klein had a lot of it and even earned the name “Killa Klein” for his random funny outbursts. I hate to use the word “underdog” on this show because we’re all at the bottom of the mountain trying to become UFC fighters. In this case even Klein felt like an underdog because of CB’s high profile and #1 pick status from Rampage.

Most of you already know about CB. I didn’t know much about him other than his great wrestling before the show, but I would soon find out about his grappling and Muay Thai skills. I thought that he was just another wrestler, but after training with him I noticed that he was well rounded. He hits hard as hell, has great subs, and he’s meaner than a muthaf*$#a when it’s time to fight. He has this alter ego called the “DOBERMAN” and I saw that as he entered the cage.

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Videos: Harris vs. Sadollah, Schultz vs. Yarbrough

From last night’s episode of TUF; props to MMATKO.

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Gerald Harris’s ‘TUF 7′ Blog: Down But Not Out

Gerald Harris Ultimate Fighter UFC Amir Sadollah
(Sadollah about to get Harrisplexed.)

Every Thursday morning, Team Rampage member Gerald Harris blogs his reactions to each new episode of The Ultimate Fighter. And this was the one we’ve been waiting for — the night Gerald actually gets to fight. But despite his early domination against Amir Sadollah, things didn’t turn out the way he’d hoped. Read below for Gerald’s rundown of the fight and how he felt about it, and give him a shout at his MySpace page.

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It’s 8:58 p.m. and I’m staring at the clock hoping that it doesn’t click to 9:00. I’m sitting on the couch with my friends because every Wednesday we get together to watch the show. It was cool for the first couple weeks, but this one was different — I wasn’t smiling as much and I wasn’t excited. No one noticed and things went on as they did in the past. I’m flooded with text messages, phone calls, and high fives from my friends when the fight picks are announced. The fight starts and people are sending texts, calls, and jumping up and down as I slam and strike Amir the entire first round. Then it happens — “Bam,” in a quick flash — the fight’s over. You talk about silence? No one said a word for about 15 minutes, my phone stopped ringing, and nobody even looked at me. I broke the silence by saying “I’m sorry that I let y’all down, but it’s not over.” They’ve all seen the show and the success of fighters who got a second chance or at least earned a career in the UFC.

Now, let me take you back a couple months before I got there. I trained my ass off, running miles in the morning, and never missed Team Quest practice unless it was an emergency. I dreamed about holding The Ultimate Fighter trophy as Dana handed it to me and joining the ranks of Stevenson, Griffin, Evans, and many others. I was also doing bad financially and could barely afford to support my family, so winning those fights would help me provide for them. I’m the father of two and that’s how I feed them; this is my life, and the only thing that I do to earn money. When I lost that fight I felt like I let everyone down, I didn’t earn money to feed my kids, and lost the chance to become the next Ultimate Fighter. Once I took a deep breath and talked to Rampage I realized that it was ok. I still have a future in the UFC and a possible second chance to get into the tournament. During the fight I injured my ankle and scratched my eye, but that healed in a few days — the doc cleared me as good to go.

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Gerald Harris’s ‘TUF 7′ Blog: Episode 6

Ultimate Fighter UFC Matt Brown Jeremy May
(“Sic semper tyrannis, bitch!”)

Every Thursday morning, Team Rampage member Gerald Harris will be blogging his reactions to each new episode of The Ultimate Fighter 7 on CagePotato.com. Here’s what he had to say about last night’s ep, in which Jeremy May got his comeuppance and Team Rampage finally pulled out a win.

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I don’t think too many people were surprised by the punishment dished out by Matt Brown. People ask me about him all the time — they think he’s a serial killer and mean as hell. To tell you the truth, I thought the same thing, but he’s actually one of the coolest dudes in the house. He opened up a lot about how fighting kept him alive and changed him in a positive way. He earned a lot of respect by doing that and whoopin’ ass in practice.

May definitely asked for it, but I gotta give it too him for coming out strong. The only thing that pissed me off is that the admitted to faking the knee injury. Now, if you don’t already know, I’m probably Jeremy’s only friend and I didn’t even know that. A lot of people were cautious of overtraining, but to sandbag is another story. The fight went well — it was all emotion, so they got tired pretty quick. But Brown had the better cardio and weathered the storm, then finished May with a kick to the nose. As bad as some people wanted to see Jeremy lose, I hated to see Team Forrest in control again.

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Gerald Harris’s ‘TUF 7′ Blog: Episode 5

TUF7cast

Every Thursday morning, Team Rampage member Gerald Harris will be blogging his reactions to each new episode of The Ultimate Fighter 7 on CagePotato.com. Here’s what he had to say about last night’s ep, in which tensions rose between Jeremy May and Mike Brown, and Brandon Sene and Dante Rivera went head-to-head in a three-round war.

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In case you didn’t notice, Matt Brown isn’t the happiest person in the house. If I had to pull a prank on someone, he would be the last one on the list. Matt seems like the type of person where you wake up in the middle of the night and he’s standing over you, in his underwear, sharpening a butcher knife. So, instead of possibly getting killed in my sleep I chose not to participate in the “lime juice” prank. That’s a national rule: You don’t put lime juice in a Southern man’s dip! Like midgets to amusement parks, gas prices to SUVs, or diarrhea to a track star in the 100-yard hurdles, those two things don’t go together. I actually like the fact that somebody caused some trouble, because we were pretty damn bored. You’ve probably heard that we don’t have any TVs, radio, magazines, books, internet access, phones, and worst of all, no women! Except for the ring girls — and we enjoyed every step they took around the ring. Every step.

The Brown-May incident kind of overshadowed the actual fight pick between Brandon Sene and Dante Rivera. There was no drama between those two, so we just wanted to win and get control. From an mma view, that was a pretty good fight. From a fan’s view, it could have been seen as boring because people like action — especially stand-up action. Sene was busy and could have won the fight if he had escaped more, but Dante maintained control and pulled off the victory. What people fail to realize is that when someone loses on the show, reality kicks in. Brandon had sold his car and had just moved into a house so he planned on making some money to support himself. His only hope now is that someone gets injured and he gets a second chance.

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Unaired ‘TUF 7′ Footage: Rampage Cracks Down

Reminder: A new episode of The Ultimate Fighter: Team Rampage vs. Team Forrest airs tonight at 10 p.m. on SpikeTV, and Team Rampage member Gerald Harris will be blogging his reactions to it right here tomorrow morning. To commemorate this occasion, here’s an outtake clip from episode three of Rampage laying down the law on his team’s jokesters following Mike Dolce’s loss to Jesse Taylor. Yes, that’s Gerald receiving the totally accidental bitchslap at the end.

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Gerald Harris Blogs ‘TUF 7′ for CagePotato!

GH
(Harris [right] rocks Fabio Leopoldo during their IFL match last April.)

Gerald “Hurricane” Harris, who fought in the IFL (as a member of the Portland Wolfpack) and the Freestyle Cage Fighting organization before being chosen for The Ultimate Fighter: Team Rampage vs. Team Forrest, has agreed to be a super-special CagePotato guest blogger for the rest of this season of TUF. Tune in every Thursday morning as the Team Quest fighter and Tulsa, Oklahoma native gives his reactions to each new episode (Wednesdays, 10 p.m., SpikeTV). If you haven’t been keeping up, Gerald recaps the first four episodes below. Enjoy…

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Surprise (Episode #1)

I‘ll start by saying that I was one of the “smart” ones who thought I was flying to Vegas to move into the house. In the past, people have had this privilege and thrown it away for a girlfriend, small injury, or because they couldn’t make weight. This year Dana White had a solution for that. He described those past cast members as “pussies and poseurs” — and I don’t fit either one of those names.

In the first episode, 16 fighters entered the UFC building with high-fives and hugs, only to be met by another 16 competitors in the gym. It was so quiet you could hear a flea fart. At first I told myself, “look at those 16 alternates,” until Dana announced that the 32 men standing in the gym would fight each other to get into the house. It didn’t really affect most fighters until he said we had to make weight in 24 hours and fight in 48. Some of the fighters had gained a lot of weight since we arrived the day before. I was lucky enough to only be six pounds over, along with many others. Also, I wrestled all my life — so cutting weight has never been a problem. Losing would have been devastating, because I came to the show with $67 in the bank and I planned on being the next Ultimate Fighter!

The day of elimination fights started off with a bang. Mike Dolce hit Prince McClean so hard he dropped as if he was hit with a taser. I felt bad for McClean, but Dolce is a fellow Team Quest member so I was rooting for him. In other action, Cale Yarbrough battled with Clark in a scramble-filled bout that was going well until Clark proved that his weight cutting had an effect on him. Yarbrough punished the extremely fatigued Clark with haymakers and wild kicks until the stoppage. With one UFC fight already under his belt, Steve Byrnes was seen as a guaranteed cast member. But in a back and forth match, he was eventually stopped with an armbar by Amir Sadollah, who had never had a pro fight.

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