Roy Nelson Makes His Fight Pick
I used to really like Roy Nelson. I used to watch him way back when he was in the IFL. I was shocked to see him become a contestant on an earlier TUF. Now, not so much.
Dana White near the end of the episode said “you can’t fix stupid.” I agree with him on that count but I’m not quite sure Nelson is that stupid. He simply doesn’t make wise choices.
Rather than using judgment or fight analysis to choose who would best represent his team and have the best shot at winning, Nelson opted to cut straws and have the guy who got the shortest one simply pick who he wanted. Brilliant. This way whoever got lucky enough to draw the shortest straw could choose whoever he thought would offer his best odds of success.
This is great if you’re a fighter on the show because you can call out who you think you can for sure beat. It’s not a great method to use if you’re a coach though. If they keep using this method, whoever was unlucky enough to pick the longest straw will have to settle for whoever is left. And if the fighters before him are smart or want to assure themselves a victory, they are going to choose the easiest fighters left, leaving the perceived toughest fighters until last. Nelson should be making the best match-ups he can so his team can send the most fighters on to the next round.
Horrible tattoo guy Julian Lane picked the shortest straw. Nelson also gave his fighters the choice of giving the straw to someone else or hand selecting your own opponent. Lane chose his own opponent, another snafu by Nelson.
By letting Julian choose his own opponent, he was basically giving up control of the next fight pick to Julian. Nelson was pinning the future of his team on whether or not Julian won. And since Julian called out one of the top picks from the other team, probably to show how tough he was, and lost, Nelson just gave up fight pick control to Carwin.
I suspect that Lane is simply a very strong, musclebound dude that figures to win his fights based on strength rather than polished techniques.
Fighters Leave the House
The UFC allowed the fighters to leave the house to go to a private movie screening of the new Kevin James movie. So they let the mma fighters leave the house to go watch an mma movie. It’d be like letting the prisoners out to go watch Shawshank Redemption.
TUF 16 Episode 4 Recap - Fight Announcement
Julian Lane ended up picking I guess the #2 pick of Carwin’s team, Bristol Marunde. Cool tidbit – if you have ever watched the World’s Strongest Man competitions, you may have seen a guy named Jesse Marunde. Yep, brothers.
Later it was revealed to us that Marunde weighs more than a middleweight, 186, and has to cut 15 lbs in 24 hours. Wise. I think Marunde may think too highly of his own desire. Simply wanting it so badly can’t compensate for a lack of fighting skills. Now I’m not saying he doesn’t have the skillz to pay the billz, but right now he isn’t a world beater and I believe there are others in the house who will manhandle him.
TUF 16 Episode 4 Recap - Training Sessions
Team Nelson – Julian’s cardio was called into question. Said he came in shape to fight two 5 minutes rounds. When he was pressed to do more cardio with the rest of his team, Lane replied with “I can’t.” What was that cute saying I used to have in the upper left corner of this site? If you think you can’t you’re right. He did do the extra cardio though on the aerodyne.
The sparring they did show did not look so hot. Lane kept making the mistake of being content with being pressed up against the fence and would move in such a way that he kept staying right there. Nelson tried to correct it.
Team Carwin – Marunde’s sparring looked good, very crisp. This training looked a lot more mma focused than Nelson’s but I’m sure that was just editing.
Weigh-Ins
The only issue here was that 2 guys from Roy’s team both mentioned, not to us, that they didn’t think Marunde made weight. They said that there was no deflection on the needle of the scale. Of course Roy did not mention this to anyone until after the fight. Ummm, what did you think was going to happen after the fight? A no contest? A redo? Watch the footage and see if the needle moved? You gotta bring that crap up right then and there as Dana pointed out.
TUF 16 Episode 4 Recap - Fight Day
Julian Lane
5’9″, 4-0, Mansfield , OH
Bristol Marunde
6’1″, 15-7, Las Vegas, NV
Round 1
No touch of gloves. These two had a pretty intense staredown at the weigh-ins so there was not going to be any gentlemanly handshake at the start.
Marunde almost immediately had Lane up against the cage, his kryptonite in the training session. For a big, beefy dude like Lane the grappling in this position really tires out your arms which makes throwing punches later much, much harder.
There was almost zero pummeling from the clinch against the cage. Super frustrating to watch as a wrestler. Marunde did land some nice knees from here.
Marunde closing out the round
Lane was putting everything into every punch he threw. He looked tired by about halfway thorugh the round, and was unable to get off the cage very easily.
Lane finally did connect with some decent strikes and it looked like he hurt Marunde a little. Marunde came out of these exchanges with a cut on the bridge of his nose. Afterwards, Marunde looked a whole lot more tentative with his striking.
As the round closed, Julian was for sure tired and showed no octagon control.
I guess you’d have to give this round to Marunde.
Round 2
More heater fastballs with every punch from Lane. So much so that he lost his own balance when whiffing one time and went down to a knee. Then Lane didn’t throw any sort of strike for at least 30 seconds, probably more like a minute.
Observation – I feel like Marunde really, really, wanted this fight. Until he got hit. After that, neither one of them really wanted it.
Nelson’s voice is still hoarse and yet he was shouting explicit instructions to Lane who wouldn’t or couldn’t follow them. That has got to be frustrating as crap for Nelson.
Conclusion
That was it. Kind of a boring fight. Not very good technique on display from either fighter. Marunde won by decision 20-18. After, Carwin said he would’ve liked to have seen more clinching. Of course you would Shane.
Of course we got to see inside the locker rooms post fight. In Nelson’s, Lane was in tears telling everyone about how he had nothing back home to go to. That this was it. Why the hell didn’t you fight like it then?
An old military saying, repeated often by my Dad while I was growing up, had to do with taking food and being wasteful. You can take what you want but you had better want what you take. For my Dad this meant taking only the food you wanted and that you could eat all of. Once it was on your plate, it was yours. If you didn’t eat it all that night for dinner, that was your breakfast, and lunch, and dinner again if need be. Seriously.
Where was I? Oh yeah. I feel like Lane kind of wanted it (not badly enough) and sure as hell didn’t take it.
Until next week mis amigos.
To read the previous post, TUF 16 episode 3 recap, click here.
To read the next post in the series, TUF 16 episode 6, click here. I skipped 5.
To go watch the episode at fights4all.com, click here.
TUF 16 Episode 4 Recap - pink mohawk have any bite?
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