Team Lesnar Blog: Chris Cope on “the Ultimate Fighter 13,” Episode No. 10 at BetLM

Well, it’s finally over. Months of wait­ing for the tour­na­ment to play out on Spike TV are finally over, and now you know what hap­pened — I came up one fight short of mak­ing it to the finals.

Hon­estly, I didn’t yet get a chance to re-watch the fight. I’ve been in Las Vegas and prepar­ing for my fight on the finale this week­end, so I didn’t get a chance to tune in. I had some peo­ple tell me they thought I won the first round, and I know Brock Lesnar was really happy as it was happening.

If you watch the fight, I know I was stop­ping Ram­sey Nijem’s take­down attempts. No one had really been able to stop his shots up to that point. He did take my down, but I did get back up, and I think Ram­sey was get­ting tired. But he threw that over­hand right, and he caught me. I just wasn’t expecting that.

I talked to him after the fight, and Ram­sey said that’s exactly what they had been work­ing on. He was going to fake the shot and come in with that over­hand right. It caught me behind the ear and threw my equi­lib­rium off. My legs buck­led a lit­tle bit, and that’s when Steve Maz­za­gatti jumped in. He knew I wasn’t really able to defend myself.

I’m not sure how I felt about the stop­page. Maybe I’ll feel fine with it when I finally watch the fight. That over­hand right rocked me, and I know he hit me with a knee, too. Some peo­ple told me it maybe should have gone a lit­tle bit longer. But bot­tom line is I made a mis­take, and that was drop­ping my left hand.

After the per­for­mance, Brock and the other coached said I did a good job. But man, I feel like I could have won that fight had I not been caught with that over­hand right. Still, Ram­sey is def­i­nitely one tough S.O.B. He’s a gamer, and he comes in ready to go. My hat’s off to him.

I think Ram­sey was start­ing to get tired. He wasn’t able to take me down like he had every­one else. If he didn’t catch me with that over­hand right, maybe I could have earned a win. Unfor­tu­nately, it is what it is. I learned from it. And as for my over­all time on the show, I think I proved a lot to a lot of peo­ple. I took out Team Dos San­tos’ No. 1 pick, Shamar Bai­ley. Shamar can com­plain about his back all he wants, but he still lost the fight, and it was a fight he asked for.

Ram­sey was absolutely the best fight­ers on their team, and I gave him a good fight. I don’t hold my head down for any­thing I did on the show. I went past a lot of people’s expec­ta­tions, and I came very close to being in the finals. Unfor­tu­nately I came up just short.

In ret­ro­spect, I would say being on “The Ulti­mate Fighter” was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. It was a beau­ti­ful things, and it was an ugly thing. I really learned who I am as an indi­vid­ual through the expe­ri­ence in the house. I learned how para­noid peo­ple can get in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions and how peo­ple can turn against oth­ers. I saw how some fight­ers that are top-notch, if you take their coaches away and their sup­port net­work away, they’re not [expletive].

You’ve got 14 guys in the house, but only one can be “The Ulti­mate Fighter.” My opin­ion, though, is that every­one who made it through the whole expe­ri­ence, I think that we all became an ulti­mate fighter in our own way. Not very many peo­ple can do that — locked in a house with 14 guys for six weeks. I still remem­ber that when we wrapped the show, I was in the back doing an inter­view, and they were ask­ing me if I was bummed that I just lost. I was like, ‘No, man. I’m not bummed at all. I went above and beyond what most peo­ple thought that I would do on the show, and I almost made it into the finals.’

I proved a lot of peo­ple wrong, and I showed exactly what you can do if you believe in your­self and you work hard. I’ve got noth­ing to hang my head about. I proved a lot. Had I not made one sim­ple mis­take of drop­ping my hands, I could have won that fight. No excuses. Ram­sey beat me, fair and square, and I hope that he pulls the win off in the finals because after the way Tony Fer­gu­son acted in the house and after what he said, I feel like Ram­sey would be a bet­ter role model than Tony.

Chuck O’Neil

So I’m fight­ing Chuck O’Neil at the finale. There’s not a ton of prepa­ra­tion to do. He knows what I’m going to do, and I know what he’s going to do. It’s a tough dynamic because Chuck is one of the guys from the show I kept in con­tact with after tap­ing. We would send text mes­sages back and forth with him.

When I got the call from Joe Silva to fight Chuck, I called him imme­di­ately to tell him, and he already knew. We just said, ‘Hey, man, it’s noth­ing per­sonal. Let’s just go out there an put on a show.’

Chuck and I spent a lot of time together dur­ing the six weeks of tap­ing. I will con­sider him a friend both dur­ing and after the fight. It’s noth­ing per­sonal. But it is hard to fight a friend, espe­cially since we both know what each other is good and bad at. The show wrapped March 1, and now the finale is June 4, so it’s not like you can get that much bet­ter in three months. There’s only so much each of us was able to work on, and Chuck had a tough fight with Tony, so he had to recover before he could train.

Either way, we’re going to go out there and put on a show.

The future

I have three goals that I want to accom­plish before I hang up the gloves. I want to fight in the UFC at least once, and I’m get­ting that oppor­tu­nity on Sat­ur­day. Peo­ple can make the argu­ment about whether it’s a UFC event or not, but there are estab­lished UFC fight­ers on the card, it’s a Zuffa con­tract, and it’s tele­vised. In my opin­ion, it’s a UFC event. So that’s one goal down.

I also want to fight in Japan at least once, and I want to win a belt in a big orga­ni­za­tion. When those three goals are done, I’m good. Hon­estly, I think the biggest chal­lenge out of all those is mak­ing it to the UFC, and I’m get­ting that oppor­tu­nity this week­end. I’m happy with myself for accom­plish­ing that, and if I beat Chuck, I can remain with the UFC. If I lose, at least I still had the chance to fight for the UFC.

Chuck is tough. His loss to Tony was pretty one-sided, but he hung in there and took some shots. He’s very durable.

Thanks again to every­one who read my blog this sea­son. Hope­fully, every­one sees that if you believe in your­self, you can do a lot of amaz­ing things. At one time, I was just a kid watch­ing the UFC. Did I ever think I’d be fight­ing in the UFC? Not really. But when I started train­ing MMA, things started to hap­pen, and ti all started to mate­ri­al­ize. Now I’m fight­ing for the UFC.

I’m going to go in there against Chuck, and I’m just going to try and have as much fun as pos­si­ble. In my book, the hard work has been done. I busted my ass. I didn’t take any time off after the show. I got right back in the gym and trained my butt off. If you work hard, sur­round your­self with pos­i­tive peo­ple and believe in your­self and fol­low the blue­prints that have been laid by peo­ple like Fedor Emelia­nenko, Dan Hen­der­son and some of these other leg­ends of the sport, any­body can do it. It’s just about work­ing hard. That’s what makes the Georges St-Pierres, the Ander­son Silvas.

We were cho­sen to be on “The Ulti­mate Fighter” because we’d make good TV, but we also had to fight. I remem­ber going out to eat with Dana after we fin­ished film­ing, and he said that the peo­ple that do “The Ulti­mate Fighter” come out of the house such bet­ter fight­ers. I really thought about that when I left the house, and what I real­ized was you’re put under so much pres­sure in that house and such nerves and every­thing else, and you learn to fight through it. If you can make it through it, you become so much bet­ter — not really tech­ni­cally, but a men­tally bet­ter fighter.

Fight­ing is a chess match, and the guys that win the most are some of the smartest fight­ers out there, and they’re the best at play­ing the game. Now, I feel like com­ing out of the house has knocked me up a cou­ple of notches. I’m excited because I feel I’m going to be able to do big things now.

I’ve got my team together now. I’ve had this expe­ri­ence. I know how to train bet­ter. More than any­thing, it’s all just been sur­real. I was fight­ing in front of Dana White. I had Brock Lesnar in my cor­ner. I had Junior Dos  San­tos in the other cor­ner. There were cam­eras all around. While you’re doing it, it’s hard to take it all in. Sit­ting there watch­ing it on TV, it kind of just blows your mind away. It’s like, “Geez. I really just did that.”

I’ll never for­get being at the air­port once we all got out. We all went in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, and I turned my phone on. I’ve got all these mes­sages and Face­book and every­thing else, and it’s like, “Did that just hap­pen? Did I just make it through six weeks of com­plete hell? And now I’m sup­posed to just go back to normal life?”

While I was on the show, I remem­ber telling all the guys that this was some­thing we would all remem­ber for the rest of our lives. It’s one of these things that very few peo­ple get to expe­ri­ence. We were all priv­i­leged to be on the show, and I think most of us came off the show as much bet­ter people.

Thanks again for read­ing guys. I came up just short, but I know I couldn’t have made it that far with­out my team at The Arena and my strength and con­di­tion­ing coach, Tom Hill.

“The Ulti­mate Fighter 13″ cast mem­ber Chris Cope (4–1) blogs
each Thurs­day exclu­sively for MMAjunkie.com. The wel­ter­weight prospect takes read­ers behind the scenes of Spike TV’s
pop­u­lar real­ity series,
which airs Wednes­days at 10 p.m. ET/PT.

Check out more UFC News at MMAjunkie.com. This story orig­i­nally appeared on MMAjunkie.com and is syn­di­cated on Yahoo! Sports as part of a content-partnership deal between the two sites.