Zak Cummings TUF 17 Episode 6 Blog

After Kelvin won a huge upset over the veteran Bubba in the previous week’s TUF 17 episode, Team Darkside matched up Tor “The Hammer” Troeng versus Josh Samman. This episode starts off with Bubba being very hard on himself but giving tons of credit to Kelvin for never stopping and having no quit in him. Last episode, Josh was complaining about some injuries but after his name was called he seemed confident and ready to go. This kind of makes me wonder if all his talk about waiting ‘til Tuesday to fight was more of a strategy he was attempting to play. Hmmm???

Tor or Thor in English is an excellent fighter. He is very well-rounded, and he’s the number one ranked middleweight in Sweden; number two overall ranked fighter out of Sweden behind Light Heavyweight standout Alex Gustafsson. Since all of his fights have been in Europe nobody in the house really knows much about Tor except for he’s very quiet. Funny thing is I think Josh was concerned by his mysterious role and hammered him with questions during one of our open workouts, where both teams were in the gym at the same time. I felt very close to Tor throughout my time in the house, he was very humble, respectful, and a great training partner. Tor is a very smart man, back home he is an Engineer working for a university doing research. He was very quiet it seemed but in the house most guys just talked to talk, or talk about themselves. I actually had many good conversations with Tor over breakfast and in our room during our time there and I learned quite a bit about him and Sweden. The Swedish culture is very different; he will have a conversation and answer any questions that you ask him. They just don’t talk to hear themselves speak, like us self-centered Americans. HAHA

Being in this house we try to find anything to entertain us. Believe me, it didn’t take much, the longer we were in there. So that being said, Tor’s nickname is “The Hammer” so we decided we had to create a hammer for him, or Mjolnir as it’s known in Swedish. Jimmy first made a small prototype with water bottles and paper cups wrapped in pre-wrap and tape. Once we got back to the house we managed to tape up a couple water bottles together for the handle and Jimmy sculpted the top of the hammer out of a large foam roller that Luke had. This bad boy seemed indestructible. I was pretty impressed by the craftsmanship.

While the Darkside was training to get Tor ready for his fight, we had a little mishap. We had a drill where we were just working nothing but jabs; Luke and Uriah were going together and Uriah dropped his hands while Luke (being a good training partner) was just touching him with jabs then out of nowhere Uriah blasted Luke in the chin with a very stiff jab, which upset Luke. Uriah once again gets all upset and starts’ saying this is a competition. We all understand that there will be only one winner at the end, but we all have to train together and push each other to become the best we can. While sparring and training you mainly have to trust your partners. There is a mutual respect between the teammates to help protect one another. Uriah has no concept of this, he has a 20% speed and then he has a 100% speed, no in between. Luke might have overreacted but this definitely wasn’t the first or the last time he had incidents during training.

Josh felt he was in charge of Team Jones acting like a controlling dictator but guess they had to deal with it. Josh went on about the story of him tearing his quad and nearly losing his leg. Ironic part of this is when Josh and myself tried out for TUF for the first time we actually got matched up together. He came at me like a spider monkey and actually got a pretty controlling position on me and moved to my back. We nearly rolled into the head table and Joe Silva stopped us and restarted. After that I woke up and took the top position but we had some very tough scrambles and I’m guessing during a scramble is when he hurt his leg. His quad was torn and when he flew back home the pressure pretty much exploded the tear, which completely changed the severity of the injury. I guess Josh wasn’t allowed to play with guns either… Important info about him.

There really wasn’t much drama in the house this season, a few little bickering arguments here and there but nothing like you’ve seen in past seasons. Most of this season’s drama included Uriah, be it during training or like this episode showed in the house calling Luke out to fight next. Even though there was one Team Jones fighter (Collin) that moved on, Uriah called out his teammate Luke. It was stupid and disrespectful but he said it. Oh well, obviously everyone is there prepared to fight anyone, teammate or not but there is a time that you want to start matching up against teammates. Uriah at this point starts showing his true colors and splitting himself away from the team. I like Uriah, I got along with him pretty well, but I just accepted him for how he was and dealt with it instead of really putting him off as an outcast. He started hanging out with the Team Jones guys but once again someone said the wrong thing and it set him off. This ended with Uriah asking if Adam’s girlfriend was a bitch like him, which was completely uncalled for and then getting into it with Adam, Josh, and Collin. It really is starting to show the two faces of Uriah. He is completely different in his confessional interviews then he is in the house interacting.

We got to actually get out of the house one night and have an outing to watch the GSP versus Condit UFC event at the Red Rock Casino while bowling. We were like little kids in a candy store with this small taste of freedom. It was an amazing experience and really relieved some pressure to just forget about training and the house. Chael interrupted Jon’s interview and challenged him to a competition of the best of three frames. Now, Jon Jones, the light heavyweight champion of the world and freak athlete, can really do nothing but fight. Bowling, throwing a football or anything else really isn’t his thing. Chael walked away the victor and Jon had to wear a Team Sonnen jersey during one of his practice sessions. Jones took the loss like a man, which hopefully he takes losing his belt to Chael in April the same way.

During the fight Tor started off very well, controlling Josh against the cage and landing solid shots on the breakaways. Josh finally worked his way up to his feet and landed some solid knees and right hands against the cage. Once they separated, Tor kind of slips and falls backwards in a straight line then Josh blitzes in with a kick to a jab cross which caught Tor right on the button and dropped him for a huge win for Josh and Team Jones. Side note, Josh and Tor bet that the loser had to cook the other one dinner.

Then, next week’s match up was made and Jon called out Clint’s name. There was talk in the house that if Bubba would have beat Kelvin then their next pick would have been Clint and Me. So when I hear Clint being called, I was pretty certain I was next and actually was inching myself out to the face off. Jon pulled a fast one and looked at me while calling Jimmy for the fight. I guess they made some last second changes. Which means Dylan and I will be the last preliminary fight on the following week. I’m very excited for next week’s TUF 17 episode. During the previews, Josh goes to the emergency room and could possibly be out of the tournament, we have another outing to Hooter’s which you could only imagine what that was like for us, and Jones’ number one pick is set to fight 3-0 Jimmy Quinlan.

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If you missed last week’s blog from Zak Cummings just click here to check it out and make sure to check back next week as he continues to blog throughout the TUF 17 season exclusively on MMAValor.

Tags: Blog, Chael Sonnen, Jon Jones, Josh Samman, MMA, The Ultimate Fighter, Tor Troeng, TUF 17, UFC, Uriah Hall, Zak Cummings

Category: Exclusive, MMA, UFC, Ultimate Fighter