Chris Beal’s TUF 18 Fighter Blog Week 3: No Excuses, I Will Be Back!

By now, you know that I fought Chris Holdsworth on the latest episode of The Ultimate Fighter.

And, by now, you know that things didn’t exactly go my way.

Everybody focused on my injured hand. And yeah, it truly was injured. In fact, I’m still working towards getting it back to 100 percent, hoping that I’ll be ready and that they’ll ask me to fight on the TUF 18 Finale.

My hand was so swollen that they had to cut my glove just so I could get my hand into it.

But anyone that knows Chris Beal knows that I don’t make excuses.

I don’t care that I couldn’t let my right hand fly like I’m used to. It sucked, but I thought I could use my speed and such to win the fight. I still feel like I could have and should have won that fight.

And that’s not taking anything away from Chris. He’s a really good guy, a high-level black belt in jiu-jitsu, and proved that he’s a well-rounded fighter.

As I said, I can’t take anything away from Chris; he did what he had to do and he beat me.

The funny part of the whole situation is that Chris and I roomed together on the show. In fact, I bunked in the bed above his. It was a little weird being around the guy that you’re going to be fighting all day long, but we’re both professionals and handled it well. There wasn’t any animosity between us.

What was actually harder for me was that I’m a guy that gets homesick fairly easily, so not being around my coaches or my family, especially my son Chris, Jr., was much more difficult than hanging out with my opponent.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved my coaches on the show. Coach Ronda was awesome. She was there for me, and her and the other coaches gave me all the support that I could have asked for. I just missed that taste of being in my usual surroundings.

But Coach Ronda and the crew are straight up G’s man. They keep it real, and it was almost too real during that whole situation in the suite at Red Rock when Miesha and Ronda nearly came to blows.

You guys don’t know how crazy that was. It was about ten times worse than what they showed on TV.

Ronda was so mad, she slammed her wine glass down and it shattered.

I’m just glad Bryan was smart enough to not listen to Miesha telling him to grab Coach Ronda’s ass. I don’t think anyone could have pulled them apart if that had happened.

Luckily, everybody came to their senses before it escalated, but I hate to think how that whole situation would have went down if all the cameras weren’t around. There is not love lost between those two, that’s straight up real.

It sucked to relive losing that fight, but I’ll tell you what. You haven’t seen the last of Chris Beal. I will be back and better than ever.

And who knows, maybe one day Chris Holdsworth and I will get the opportunity to meet again and have the fight that we should have had on the show.

Team Rousey’s Chris Beal is blogging exclusively for MMAWeekly.com readers throughout the Team Rousey vs. Team Tate season. You can follow him on Twitter @RealDealCbeal.