Team Tate blog: Chris Holdsworth on 'The Ultimate Fighter 18,' episode No. 4

This week’s episode opened up with the tension between Dennis Hallman and Edmond Tarverdyan, and I have to admit I had no idea that had happened. I’m not sure where I was when that happened, but I was entertained to watch it. I don’t know exactly when it happened. I guess maybe we were being held in the locker room at the time.

Edmond was always cool to me. I was always very respectful toward him, and he showed me the same courtesy. He’s just very serious about what he does, and maybe he just likes stirring stuff up. I don’t know exactly what was behind it. It probably all comes back to the stuff Bryan Caraway said on Twitter. I actually don’t know the whole story, so I don’t know how it all started, but it’s pretty obvious they don’t like each other.

After that was over, you saw where Team Tate started working out with the men and women together. At first, we had primarily been doing guys with guys and girls with girls. But as we got more comfortable with each other, I think we just wanted to mix it up a little, and the girls wanted to go with us. It was good for us, too, because if a guy was sitting out, we could mix it up with a female. A couple of the girls liked to go hard, too. My whole motto in training is, “You play the beat, and I’ll dance to it.”

It wasn’t anything new to me. I’ve trained with women before. Miesha Tate actually came to Team Alpha Male before, but it was prior to my time with the team. But I have no problems training with the girls. Everybody brings something different to the table, and I enjoyed training with them. I learn something from every training session, so I was happy to mix it up with them. Some of the girls liked to go harder than others, and I try to go as hard as my training partner is going. Obviously, I’m not going to go 100 percent like I do with some of the guys, but you also can’t let them just run all over you!

Roxanne Modafferi was fighting for our team. She’s got a whole different personality than anyone in the house and really from anyone I know. She brings something unique to the table and something unique to the whole mixed martial arts game. She was always very positive. She did a lot of cleaning. She always had a smile on her face, and she tried to stay out of all the drama. It was funny because I’m not sure how she was raised or whatnot, but a lot of times when we would have like, grown-up conversations or something like that, you could just tell that Roxanne was like, “Uh, all right. I’m out of here.” I got a kick out of that sometimes. But everybody is different.

Before the fight, Julianna Pena gave Roxanne a little note. Now, you might think I was jealous, but I think she was just trying to cover her tracks! She didn’t want me to be singled out.

But seriously, I thought it was a great letter, and I enjoyed seeing that. She was very supportive of her teammate, and I thought that was a great scene where Roxanne got a little emotional. I thought it was awesome to see that passion.

As for the fight, itself, it was definitely an emotional fight, as you could tell afterward. But I learned something from both of those fighters by watching this episode. I didn’t ever really get to talk to Jessica Rakoczy too much during the show just because she was on the opposite team and she did her own thing. But she definitely was the mom of the house. Whoever’s fight it was, she was making the post weigh-in meals. She was really supportive of her team.

Roxanne got clipped a few good times in the beginning of the fight, but I do think she won the first round. She was on top, had some good positions and nearly had a few submissions. But Jessica, as a fighter, she’s a world champ for a reason. She’s got tons of heart. She’s a really good fighter, and you could tell in the second round it looked like Roxanne was slowly diminishing a little in terms of her cardio. She got hit hard a few times, and you could tell that she got rocked. Jessica was maybe just the better-conditioned fighter, and she had more pep in her step in that second round. She was just able to capitalize on it.

As someone who started from a grappling background, it’s frustrating to see someone grab the cage as much as Jessica did, but I also understand it’s just your instincts. You’re in a fight – you don’t want to be taken down. Your first instinct is to grab the cage. To be honest, I didn’t see the first couple of grabs, but then the last one I saw, and of course Chris Tognoni came in and separated them and warned her that she was going to lose a point the next time. I think that’s important for the referee to get in there and let the fighter know not to grab the fence repeatedly. Of course, I didn’t know she grabbed it three times. Normally you would expect a point deduction for that many times. But Jessica, she was just trying to win, so you can’t blame her.

The locker room was tough after the fight. I think the emotion had a lot to do with Roxanne’s personality. She took it hard, of course. She let out that scream at the end of the fight. She was so frustrated, and she dreamed, of course, of being the next “Ultimate Fighter,” and when you get that taken from you on such a large stage, it hurts. Not too many people have felt that. It sucks, to say the least. I was very moved by that scene, especially when she called Jessica over to her and gave her a big hug and kiss, especially when Jessica told here that this is where it starts, and this is where we learn. Even though they had just punched each other in the face for two rounds and basically tried to kill each other, they were still really good friends afterwards, and I thought that was very touching.

So we lost control of the fight selection, and Team Rousey picked their Davey Grant against our Louis Fisette. I thought they picked it for a few reasons. Davey was probably cutting weight already. Those Brits cut a lot of weight, so they had to make sure they were water loading and everything, so he was probably anticipating fighting anyway. Plus, like Ronda Rousey said, they thought he was the most ready. I also think they thought Louis was the best matchup for him. Bottom line, I don’t criticize their matchmaking the way Ronda hated ours. She said we picked Jessica because of her shoulder, but I didn’t even know her shoulder was messed up. And as you can tell from the fight, it didn’t really stop her from dropping some hard right hands on Roxanne, not to mention defending takedowns and ripping out of an armbar. We weren’t going after injured fighters, but either way it’s a competition, and the No. 1 most important thing is to win.

I didn’t have too much TV time in this episode. I saw myself a couple times, but I wasn’t involved too much in this episode. There’s some people like Mike Wootten that we haven’t seen at all. But hopefully we’ll get to see a little on everybody’s backstory. Overall though, I really liked the episode.

“The Ultimate Fighter 18? cast member Chris Holdsworth (4-0) blogs each Thursday exclusively for MMAjunkie.com. The bantamweight prospect takes readers behind the scenes of the FOX Sports 1-broadcast series, which airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET. Catch Holdsworth on Twitter at @holdsworth135.