“The Ultimate Fighter 31” is underway with coaches Conor McGregor and Michael Chandler attracting more eyeballs back on the series.
This season, which features eight lightweights and eight bantamweights, debuted Tuesday on ESPN. McGregor’s team features eight fighters who have not competed in the UFC against Chandler’s team of eight UFC alumni.
Among those UFC alumni is Kurt Holobaugh, the lone fighter who had two previous stints with the promotion. Holobaugh went 0-4 over those stretches, but history shows a tough strength of schedule: Steven Siler, Raoni Barcelos, Shane Burgos, and Thiago Moises.
Now at lightweight rather than featherweight, Holobaugh devastated two opponents to get a third look from the UFC.
Each week here at MMA Junkie, Holobaugh will peel back the curtain and provide an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look and give insight into what may not have made the cut into the episode.
Check out what Holobaugh had to say about Episode 3 below:
Michael Chandler as a coach
“The practices were even better than I could’ve ever imagined. That was one of the main things with wanting to be on Michael Chandler’s team. It was just for that wrestling training aspect. I felt that was one of the only things that I maybe lack a little bit, is some wrestling and being able to get up off bottom. Almost every morning in training, we’d start out with some basic wrestling – some good, old Michael Chandler wrestling drills. Right after that, he might’ve had Ryan Bader show a little something with wrestling. Then, he’d go on to Jason Strout, who’d show some striking. The practices were even better than I’d ever imagined.”
“… He would make an amazing coach (post-fighting). I felt like the way he coached us and the pep talks and just keeping us up whenever we started to fall a little bit, you’d think he’d been coaching guys his whole life.”
Training smarter not harder
“Of course we worked hard, but we weren’t beating the crap out of each other every day. There was a lot of drills we did, a lot of live drills. All of our drills were basically getting back up to our feet or maybe a good mitt session. We weren’t really sparring quite often. We’d do a little warm-up round at maybe 50 percent. Even when you start to pick it up a little bit, the coaches were like, ‘Hey, guys, bring it back down.’ They did a really good job of that. We didn’t really beat our bodies up too much. We didn’t really beat our partners up too much. I think that said a lot.”
Conor McGregor's semi-absence from team
“You can go back to Conor McGregor’s past season coaching against Urijah Faber. He doesn’t do a lot of the coaching himself. He brings a lot of his coaches in. He kind of takes a backstep and lets his coaches do all the work. But here comes fight night and you’ve got Conor running around the cage, coaching from the outside. I’m like, ‘Why don’t you get in this guy’s corner and coach him rather than be on the outside just yelling crap.’ That’s not true coaching. We’re going on the third fight and I think he’s been absent for the first three fights’ (weigh-ins) so far. Then, you see Chandler showing up every day. It didn’t matter what it is, who’s fighting. He’s there. He’s giving the guys pep talks, making sure that we’re feeling the energy off of him. He’s in the corner. He’s coaching. That’s why Mike Chandler is the man.”
The annoyance of a roaming Conor McGregor during fights
“It was very annoying. Honestly, I’m a coach, too. I’ve got a lot of local guys I’ve coached. I’ve turned around and had to tell guys to get out of my corner before. I’ve had guys walking around the ring and I’m like, ‘Hey, get the f*ck out of my corner right now. Go to the other side if you want to scream.’ I felt like there was a little bit of that on this show with Conor. There might’ve been some people getting hot about it. I’m pretty sure the commission warned him a couple times and told him to, ‘Go back over there and go sit down.’ But for the most part, it’s Conor and he gets a little bit of leeway and he takes advantage of it sometimes.”
Fight reaction: Austin Hubbard def. Aaron McKenzie via unanimous decision
“Honestly, the fight kind of went how I thought it would. I spent some time before that fight training with Austin. That was the thing. Austin, Jason Knight, and Roosevelt Roberts, all four of us I felt like were on a very similar level. Some guys are a little bit better than others in certain areas but I think it’s just the way we train together that we can see everybody’s skills. I never trained with Aaron before, but just based off of how good I think I am and then what Austin was maybe able to do in training sometimes to me, I was giving Austin the advantage in certain areas. The fight kind of went how I thought it would. I was thinking Austin would be able to control.
“The thing about being in the game for so long and fighting at a high level is patience. You can see Austin clearly had that. He was never rushing anything. When Aaron had him on the body lock and high crotch and tried to get that takedown early in the first round, Austin never panicked. He never shied away from his game plan and kept on doing what he was doing was able to take control, land some shots, and put Aaron down himself.”
A sneaky stacked veteran roster emerges as UFC alums moves to 3-0
“You go back and you look at the guys who all four of us fought and you’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s a shark tank.’ I’ve always gotten that with the UFC. I dove into the shark tank and had to sink or swim. But going back to confidence, I don’t think I had the confidence in myself at that time to swim with those sharks. That’s ultimately why I didn’t get the wins I’ve needed to stay. Just being able to fight those guys and see all the guys you fight go on to do big things, like all the guys the four of us have fought, that gives us confidence. You can talk to Row. You can talk to Austin. You can talk to Jason. Look at some of the things Jason has done. Jason has fought freaking bareknuckle and had fights that have caused him to get like 60 stitches. That’s about as bad as it’s going to get. You can fight any man in the world and you’re not going to look like that – especially not in the UFC octagon.”
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Go behind the scenes of previous episodes of “The Ultimate Fighter 31” with Kurt Holobaugh:
