John Dodson's TUF 14 Sherblog, Part 4

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“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.

Everyone is sitting there calling me a mole, a snitch, a rat, and so on. It’s because you are looking at this as a team sport, and you’ve got it all wrong.

The viewers are looking at this as Team Bisping versus Team Mayhem, and the better that a team does, the better everybody on that team will do. Eventually, someone will get a six-figure contract and the team will celebrate, right? Wrong.

This isn’t team versus team on TUF; this is two eight-man tournaments, and there’s only one guy from each weight class getting a contract. I’m looking at this like it’s “Survivor” or a competition like that: only one person can win. I liked “Mayhem” and everyone that he brought with him to help us out with training but, in the house, everyone would talk about teammates and sticking together. But the whole time, we were all looking at one other as our next opponent. The entire time we were in the house, everyone in the house was looking for ways to set up fights with one another down the line.

It wasn’t like I hated anyone in the house or anything like that, but I knew that you had to play the game in order to win, to get as much info about your opponents while giving the least. This was widespread. Everyone in the house knew who they were fighting against before the coach’s pick because we called each other in the house. There were no secrets about who was going to fight who, no surprises. The only thing we didn’t know was the order of the fights they’d get picked in, but we knew which guys were going to get into the cage with one another. It was just a matter of waiting for each one to take place.

Besides, it’s not like I gave up info that could change the outcome of a match. Think about calling me a mole or a rat when Team Mayhem actually loses a fight in the competition, because right now it's 4-0 for us. Let’s see if what I did in the house was worth it in the end when the show is all over.

The two fights on this episode were good fights. Dennis’ fight was one-sided, since Bass couldn’t get Dennis off of him. Dennis would just put the pressure on Bass so that he couldn’t get up. It looked more like Dennis working a heavy bag or playing with a practice dummy rather than an actual fight. It was a beating.

Dustin’s fight with Louis was a battle. They kept on going back and forth with strikes. Louis just couldn’t get in past his reach. Dustin really made sure that he came in and executed his plan and controlled it for the whole fight. In the end, it was the fake green hair that won over the real green -- well, slightly more real green. I guess that’s why most men like fake boobs: they’re just a little bigger and really get the job done.

If people are keeping count, Death Leprechauns are 0-3 in the house. Marcus, Josh, and Louis have all fought and lost so far, leaving just Akira, Diego and me still waiting for our turn.

After all the wins to this point, Mayhem and the other coaches came over and had a BBQ to celebrate. It was like a victory party for each winning fighter. Mayhem would bring that fighter something, anything that they wanted to eat or drink. Dustin and Dennis asked for Pizza Hut pizza with breadsticks, and Dustin wanted a sundae. Sure enough, he brought the guys everything they wanted. And, even though they didn’t get whatever they wanted, everyone else got hooked up too, because I was cooking on the grill.

Well, we’re gonna have to see what happens next week now, ‘cause it sure looks like it’s going to be a good one.