Sarah Moras of Kelowna, B.C., is one of four Canadians competing on The Ultimate Fighter 18. She will be writing weekly blogs for sportsnet.ca to share an inside perspective about what went on inside the gym and house on TUF 18.
Thoughts on my performance
I honestly don’t even know what to say about my fight. I’m extremely hard on myself all the time. I am glad that I won, but I feel like I could have done better (I’m sure every fighter feels that way). I don’t like watching fights, I find them boring, and I think I put on a boring performance in this fight. I knew that if I won this fight, I’d have to fight again in just over a week, so I had to fight safer than I like to.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: Watch The Ultimate Fighter 18 every Wednesday on Sportsnet 360 and get weekly episode recaps on sportsnet.ca
Being on a show like this is absolutely insane, and unless you’ve experienced something similar to this you have no idea what it is like. They only show a very small portion of what was going on, and there are almost always more reasons for why stuff happens the way it happens than they show on TV.
People are too harsh on Ronda Rousey
I honestly don’t hate Ronda. I thought she was pretty awesome and really cared for her team, and that is why she was there. She sacrificed her appearance for her team (and I’m sure she lost a lot of fans in the process). If it weren’t for her there wouldn’t be females on TUF or in UFC. Most of the people reading this would have no idea who I am. I appreciate what she has done for women in this sport.
Odd feeling being recognized
I thought this would be an easy episode to write about, and yet I’m finding it extremely difficult. There are a lot of emotions I was feeling around this time, and having to relive it is rather strange. Life is rather strange, there is a lot of stuff I expected to happen after the show started airing, but there is also stuff that I wasn’t expecting to happen, and it kind of threw me off. I knew that Facebook and Twitter were going to blow up. I also knew that there would be a lot more media type stuff to deal with, and that people in public would start to recognize me.
It’s actually really cool when random strangers know who I am and come up to me. What I never really expected was people that I haven’t talked to for years and years messaging me, talking to me like we are friends. It rather confuses me. I know I should be thankful for all the fans that I have, yet part of me wants to know where they were when I was struggling to get to where I am now, or if they remember being douches and picking on me in school. I miss normal conversations, where we talk about life right now, not life five months ago.
Cody gets the boot
Probably the biggest thing about this episode was Cody Bollinger missing weight. You can judge all you want, but until you are in that situation you don’t understand. Cody messed up, but honestly it’s extremely hard to stay on weight in that house. You get little notice to make weight, so for us bigger people we have to walk around way, way, way lighter than we normally do in order to make weight.
Cutting weight is difficult, and you’re basically doing it for five weeks straight not knowing if you are going to weigh in tomorrow or four weeks from now. It is extremely hard. Not only do you have to stay clean for what feels like forever, but you have a list with your name on it, and you can order whatever you can think of and it will show up the next day. There are people that have lost in the house, and don’t eat clean. There are people still in the competition that don’t eat clean, and don’t have to eat clean to maintain weight. There is always junk around. We had no phones, no computers, no internet, no books, no music, no contact with the outside world, with our families, with our coaches and team. Nothing! There is not much else to do when you are in that house other than eat, and for the most part everyone hung out in the kitchen.
Even though I totally understand what Cody was going through, I wasn’t extremely happy with the whole situation. I was cutting weight at the same time, and I had some issues with the coaches during this whole processes. I felt neglected. If I go into detail about it I don’t think anyone including myself would come off well, so I’ll leave it at that.
You can follow Sarah on Twitter @sarahcheesecake