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.
Coaches almost come to blows
Dennis Hallman and Edmond Tarverdyan wanted to fight each other. Once again there is drama and I’m not around, it’s rather funny how that works. I don’t even remember hearing about this feud. I’m kind of confused at this point. Wasn’t it Ronda and Miesha that had the problem with each other? After that it was Ronda and Bryan Caraway, now it’s Edmond and Dennis?
Maybe we should invent a new sport that combines the team aspect of hockey with the skills of MMA and have two entire teams fight each other in an extra big cage. Obviously there would have to be some extra rules but it would be interesting to see which team wins.
Rakoczy fights through injured shoulder
I don’t know if Caraway and Tate knew to begin with, but I had no idea. I never got the chance to see her fight to get into the house because I was the last female fight, so I had no idea about anyone being injured other than Chris Beal hurting his hand. It was pretty late that I found out about it, I had no idea while living with her in the house, and no one mentioned anything to me for another few weeks after this fight.
Going 100 per cent
This part of the episode really cracks me up. I train at Toshido MMA, the gym that Rory MacDonald and TUF veteran Michael Hill came out of, and so many other amazing fighters that within a few years are going to make it places and everyone is going to be blown away by the talent produced at Toshido. One of the top reasons we are so good at what we do is because we go hard in training. For the most part in training, we try to break each other so that we don’t break in a fight, so that we don’t break when it counts.
The training I did in the TUF Gym, it wasn’t anywhere near the intensity I go at back home. I would even consider it close to 50 per cent of how hard we go at Toshido. So to hear that I go hard and that I go 100 per cent all the time when no one there has even seen my 100 per cent is rather funny. One of my Toshido teammates was also laughing when he saw this clip because I wasn’t even getting hit when Louis took me down and “laid a beating on me.”
People that don’t train might not realize it the same, but if you get hit light you react different than when you get hit hard. When you get hit hard you have to move! When you get hit light, you are more comfortable staying in bad positions. When someone is throwing baby punches at your face they aren’t using the same mechanics and movement as throwing hard punches and they both leave different spaces therefore the movement is different on the escape as well as keeping top control. I’m so glad I’m back at home now where the guys aren’t scared to hit me or get hit!
Roxanne Modafferi
Just like I knew who Tara LaRosa (the girl I beat to get into the TUF house) was when I started training, I knew who Roxanne was as well. She is a pioneer of the sport. She’s been around forever! Roxanne is actually someone that I had talked to on the internet before I even knew about the tryouts or about the show. I had written a blog about being a female in the sport about a year ago, and Roxy messaged me on Twitter saying she liked my blog and we started talking after that.
She was the first person I recognized at the tryouts so I went up to her and we started talking. About 10 minutes later she asked me who I was. She makes me laugh. At tryouts I mainly hung out with her and Tara. Roxanne is an amazing person. She is very different from me, yet still completely amazing (just like me!).
Jessica Rakoczy
I had actually never heard of Rakoczy before the show. I don’t even remember seeing her at the tryouts. At this point in the house I hadn’t really talked to her very much. We talked more as the show went on, and what an amazing person she is too. After the fight I was almost in tears with what Jessica said to Roxy. For an opponent who just beat you to give you words of encouragement like that and to pick you up and to be there for you is absolutely amazing. It just shows you the kind of person that she is.
In the house I started this game where I ask a bunch of questions and you end up learning a lot from someone by the answers they give because it ends up changing the next question you ask. When we added Jessica to the game, the game was taken to the next level. The serious and emotional level. When Jessica is talking about her Mother, in the house, it was a result of the game. My heart hurt for her. I can’t imagine what it was like for her to go through that all especially not having the sport at the time to let out her anger, and emotions.
MMA makes you a better person
In November it will be two years since my dad passed away, and although it was under totally different circumstances than Rokoczy with her Mother, I feel that in some way I can relate to her. With everything that happened while my dad was sick and after he had passed away, I know I would have been completely lost if I didn’t have MMA. I believe that this sport makes people better people. It makes you happier, it takes away that anger, I know it helped make me a better person, and it seems to have done the same for Rakoczy.
I wish that all those MMA haters out there that think that it’s human cockfighting, that it’s terrible, would take the time out of their day to listen to our stories, and to check out a class and see for themselves firsthand what it is like and how it changes peoples’ lives for the better. Unfortunately I know that people that like to judge something they know nothing about, have no intention of trying to understand what they are so against.
The Fight
Roxy did great in the first round, she controlled, got it to the ground, got a couple sub attempts. The ref separated them because Rakoczy grabbed the fence in the second round, and started them in a totally different position, which sucks. Watching it I didn’t even notice her grabbing the cage, or him warning her for grabbing the cage before that point. In the second round Roxy got hit hard a few times, and the fight was stopped.
Shayna Baszler and Roxanne having a moment together was amazing. Two different teams supporting each other, getting emotional for each other, and feeling each other’s pain. I know a lot of people don’t like Shayna after the second episode, but she is truly an amazing person.
After the fight, Roxy had to do an interview and she really didn’t want to, and she had no idea of what to say, so I told her to do her interview in Japanese. It was amazing!
Next Week
A fellow Canadian, Louis Fisette, fights one of the funniest people in the house, Davey Grant.
Rouseys Mom shows up, and she is a character!