TUF Times Blog with Dustin Neace – Season 14, Episode 5

BY DUSTIN NEACE

First thing I want everyone to know I was not so upset because of my hat. The night before a lot of things happened, that through me over board. Throughout the night Akira and a few others stayed up playing pranks and yelling, just being totally obnoxious. I would say the thing that pissed me off the most was when they came into the room and shaved a spot out of Bryan Caraways head. Over the season, I had become good friends with him and a great training partner with Caraway; he is not the type of guy who is going to retaliate in any way that would have affected him back, Akira knew that.

Second, I found the cowboy hat that coach Miller had given me in the back yard full of human crap. I knew Akira and Taz (Josh) had a part in this, I was pretty upset. That is when I made the decision that I was going to get rid of all Akira’s food, drawing paper, and anything I could find of his in the kitchen. Then when I got to the gym I made sure I put all their bags together because I knew it was a group effort when they attacked my belongings. Later that day we had our fight picks.

Right before team Miller walked out into the hallway I could hear Akira and Diego talking about how they were going to kill everyone. I knew Akira would not kill anyone, but Diego I was not too sure about. As they were yelling I was just getting more and more worked up; I am the type of guy that will not take much for long, especially when cutting weight. When we finally got into the hallway, I was so upset and ready to go that every word he said just pushed me a little bit more. Thankfully they kept us separated until fight picks, because I really think I would have done something stupid that would have got us both in trouble.

When we got to the mat for fight picks I knew I would finally get to call him out. As they called me up I had no intention on a fight breaking out until he head-butted me, then I just lost it. No punches were thrown so I think that is the reason why we didn’t get into any trouble.

What happened when the fight went down in the octagon? Read on to find out!

On fight day, neither of us really said anything to each other. We pretty much stayed on our own sides of the house and got ready to fight. When we got to the gym and started warming up I was informed that the air in the gym was not working. You could definitely tell that Vegas in July is unreal heat wise; I would guess it was probably it was 110 degrees maybe. It was really throwing both our games off.

During the first round of the fight, I had said I wanted to stand with him because he had been bragging so much about his stand up. But I tripped up over one of my kicks and went to the ground. I was able to secure an ankle lock on him which I was pretty sure he had tapped, with all of the excitement of winning running through my mind I had let go before the ref pulled us apart. I know not to do that and it was a stupid mistake, from that point Akira definitely started picking his game up.

Second round, I was trying to tell my coaches to tell Herb that they needed to wipe Akira down because I could not even get a grip on him because he was so slick. I do not think it was Vaseline, but maybe cocoa butter since one of his team mates had told me they saw him put it on before the fight. At that point I lost the fight, I was thinking about everything but the fight. I started leaving myself open for shots and he landed a big punch halfway through the second that dropped me. I was out for a few seconds, but then came back to it and tried to catch my posture. I was unsuccessful for the most part. Then the round ended, which then Akira came to my corner and gave my corner some kind of gesture when the fight had not even been declared over. It pissed me off and really made me want to fight again.

Stay tuned next week for episode four and more from Dustin! Dustin would like to thank Infuse Fight Gear, Fleyes Gear, and Fiore MMA! You can follow Dustin on Facebook too! Image by Justin McAllistar