Canadian Mike Ricci of Team Carwin defeated Team Nelson’s top pick Dom Waters on episode nine of The Ultimate Fighter 16.
Ricci and Waters were the final two fighters to compete in the preliminary round of the tournament and Ricci advanced despite struggling with the fact he wasn’t enjoying his time in the house and didn’t feel like he was mentally on point.
“I did what I had to as far as physically, but mentally I didn’t know I wanted to win that fight until the end, until the last round,” Ricci told sportsnet.ca in a phone interview.
“Of all the fights I experienced with The Ultimate Fighter that one was the one I was most uncertain about, where mentally I was just not into it.
“I can’t really say I was focused or that into it the first couple weeks that I was there. I think that played into why I fought last. My coaches never picked me because they had seen I kind of wasn’t into it.”
In the first round, the Montreal native was able to pick Waters apart from the outside, landing quick kicks to Waters’ legs and midsection that did damage and kept him off balance.
Waters was able to control Ricci in the second round with cage control and a big takedown. The third round saw Ricci attempt a standing guillotine choke but Waters turned that into another big takedown. On the ground, as Waters attempted to take Ricci’s back, the Canadian reversed the position and was able to land ground-and-pound and hold onto his dominant position until the final horn sounded.
This season has been filled with questionable judging but all three judges scored the bout the same way, two rounds to one, for Ricci.
Watch new episodes of The Ultimate Fighter 16 every Friday night on Sportsnet and get weekly recaps on Sportsnet.ca.
“This fight was my crossroads,” Ricci explained. “Either you don’t want to be involved with this anymore so go in there and just coast through the fight and find a way to just to lose, or go in there and wake up and get involved in what’s happening and take advantage of this opportunity, so Dom was really the crossroad of The Ultimate Fighter for me.”
Since Waters was the top pick on the show, and coming off an impressive knockout win over Kevin Nowaczyk in the fights to get into the house, there wasn’t a long line of guys wanting to fight him.
However, the 26-year-old Tristar teammate of Georges St-Pierre and Rory MacDonald (who happened to be his best friend) was not intimidated since he has fought world-class competition in the past — including Bellator champion Pat Curran and Canadian Strikeforce star Jordan Mein, whom Ricci beat in 2009.
“It wasn’t a secret that Dom was picked last to fight. Nobody in our house wanted to fight him,” Ricci said. “Everyone’s (expletive) balls tingled every time he came around, they s— themselves all the time. There was certain guys in the house guys were scared of and the guy that scared people the most was Dom. Nobody wanted to fight him. … I really didn’t care. It didn’t faze me one bit, but that’s just because I’m not soft like most guys were in the house.”
The win snapped a three-fight losing streak for Team Carwin and evened the head-to-head record at 4-4 after all the preliminary fights.
In a surprising move — while meeting with Shane Carwin, Roy Nelson and UFC president Dana White to discuss possible quarterfinal matchups — Ricci said he wanted to fight fellow Canadian Michael Hill, whom he had bonded with in the TUF house.
White announced the quarterfinal fights and there were some unexpected matchups:
— Ricci will fight countryman Hill of Team Nelson
— Team Carwin’s Bristol Marunde meets his teammate Neil Magny
— Team Nelson teammates John Manley and Joey Rivera face off
— Team Nelson’s Colton Smith takes on Igor Araujo of Team Carwin
On the next episode of TUF 16, there is some fallout between Ricci and Hill, the weigh-ins for Araujo vs. Smith gets heated, and the first quarterfinal fight goes down.
