Ryan McGillivray’s TUF 13 blog – episode 4

Hello again everyone, Ryan “The Kid” McGillivray here again with another insider look at the 4th episode of the season. Hope everyone is enjoying an insider look at the show.

We start this episode at our training session. Lew had been telling us for a while that we had been out-working the other team and wanted it more and that was going to win us this competition.

Personally since my fight I wasn’t able to train too hard or as I would have liked. Was trying to heal up for the next round the best I could. As far as our team, we were really hitting our stride and our team/family was right on track.

Because we don’t ever see Team Lesner train it is impossible to know how hard they’re working. I have always been taught since day one not to worry about what you cannot control.

In this case not worry about how they’re training or feeling about everything. All you can control is that every day, every session, every minute you’re giving your all and never being complacent.

From there that is all you can do, and hope when you’re time comes it is enough and it’s your night. I do agree that Brock may have not been completely invested into his team or the whole process.

However Brock is a confusing man. He is extremely hard to read and the model “strong silent type”. Perhaps it is just his way to not show too much emotion, but it does make it look like he had other things on his mind. Where our coaches were very open about how much they cared and in my mind really went the extra mile for us.

We see that Charlie and Chuck are quite close and in my opinion even have a bit of a “showmance” ha-ha. At this point I wasn’t close with many people on Team Lesnar, however Charlie having kids as well, it kind of gave us an abstract bond.

Chuck and I didn’t see eye to eye from the beginning but as the season went on he was a guy that I really respected and grew a little closer to. They truly are as close as they show on the episode. Chuck literally made almost all of Charlie’s food and watched his diet.

I admit I did poke fun at it at the time but it is awesome how close they are. Their relationship has carried on after the show and are great friends and I think in the house which can be overwhelming it is great to have a friend like they were to each other.

Now Ramsey, oh Ramsey, what a character. He was our daily entertainment on our team. He is extremely fun to be around and can never have a boring day with him around. He got bugged about liking Glee and having the painted toe nails.

I was part of it, but in a harmless poking fun sort of way. And I must admit I gave Glee a try and since I have been home have watched every episode released on DVD and love the show. Ramsey kind of gets a bad wrap for being there just for TV and not being serious.

I get a little more personal side of Ramsey as I was one of his roommates. Yes he is out there and loves having fun, but he is very good at separating the two personalities.

In training he is very serious and works very hard, and is focused on his goals. He doesn’t have to hide his fun side to keep focused like I and some others do.

So do not mistake his fun side for weakness as Team Lesner did. He is a very skilled game fighter as I think he proved in his fight.

As for the fight, I predicted it would go down just as it did. I didn’t know much about Charlie but I was very confident in Ramsey. He stuck to his game plan perfectly and executed.

Training with Ramsey I know when he is on he is very tough to beat and get off of you. I made many comments to Ramsey that he is like a bad rash. Once he is on you it is very hard to get him off and he works his control better than most of the guys in the house that I saw.

Charlie just didn’t have an answer for his pressure and unfortunately for him couldn’t make it happen that night. I know he got some heat about tapping quickly and “wanting out”.

I 100% agreed at the time that he tapped quickly but once we got back to the room things changed. We got back and we learned Charlie had popped his shoulder and tore some things in his shoulder.

One must keep that in mind when they watch the end of the fight. I don’t think Charlie tapped too quickly from the choke but rather was dealing with a lot of pain as well as being choked.

Unfortunately for him he was bested on this night but I hope people see that Charlie has heart and is a good fighter, sometimes there is more to the situation than you can always see.

We were so proud of Ramsey and was amazing to have another one of us pull out a win. We had a tradition of putting our winning gloves over our headboard in our room.

It was pretty cool to have Shamar and I and now Ramsey, all three of the guys in our room with a pair of gloves on our headboard. I think now everyone can see Ramsey is a serious threat in this competition.

Ryan McGillivray’s TUF 13 blog will be posted on ProMMAnow.com following each Wednesday night episode of The Ultimate Fighter: Team Lesnar vs. Team dos Santos. Be sure to follow Ryan on Twitter @KidMcGillivray.