On this week's episode of The Ultimate Fighter, the four quarterfinal fights were matched up, and rivals Michael Johnson and Alex "Bruce Leroy" Caceres got their wish of being able to fight each other.In his weekly interview with MMAFighting.com, Johnson touched on why he wanted to fight Bruce Leroy and what kind of fight he expected. He also discussed the wild card fight on this week's episode between Aaron Wilkinson and Marc Stevens, and on the fight that nearly took place outside the cage when Josh Koscheck started jawing with members of Georges St. Pierre's team.
The full interview is below.
Michael David Smith: The big news for you coming out of this episode is that you get the fight you wanted, against Alex Caceres, aka Bruce Leroy. Why was that the fight you wanted?
Michael Johnson: Because he'd been nagging me in the house, getting on my nerves. I didn't really like the way he acted in the house, I didn't like his work ethic, I didn't like how he'd claim he was hurt, I didn't like how he'd just be lying around while we were working out. I don't appreciate that.
Did you think Alex was faking a back injury to get out of training?
I don't know if he was faking, but he was probably exaggerating. It's not my call to say if he's injured, but it was like he would work out really hard one practice and then the next practice just be lying around.
GSP asked all of you guys to pick one teammate you'd be willing to fight and it was clear for you that it would be Alex, and Alex wanted to fight you. Did you want to fight him because you disliked him personally, or because you thought you matched up well with him in the cage?
It was both. More on the not liking him side, but it was also strategic on my part, thinking I matched up with him well, had superior wrestling and could control him. I thought he was the weakest link left in the competition at that point. It was all about getting to the Finale and that was my game plan. It kind of worked out that the guy I thought I could beat was also the guy I didn't like.
The fight we saw in this episode was Aaron Wilkinson vs. Marc Stevens, and in the second round, Wilkinson sunk in the guillotine and Stevens was tapping. What did you think of that fight?
A lot of the guys thought Marc was just going to take Aaron down, but I thought Aaron was going to beat him. Marc isn't as skilled or as well rounded as he thinks he is. He took a shot and Aaron just locked up his guillotine. Pretty crazy that he got guillotined in both fights. He should have learned from his first one.
Like you said, Marc had already been choked out once on the show and it seemed like a lot of people didn't think he had earned the right to have that wild card spot.
I definitely didn't think he deserved it. I thought that spot should have gone to whoever put up the best fight in the previous round and that definitely wasn't Marc.
We almost saw a fight outside the cage when Josh Koscheck was starting stuff with Brad Tate and other guys on your team. Did you think an actual fight was going to break out?
No, I think Tate got under Koscheck's skin pretty well and Koscheck had to resort to being physical because Tate was beating him in the trash talking aspect. I didn't think they were going to actually come to blows and fight, but I actually thought the whole thing was pretty funny.
Check back every Thursday to get Michael Johnson's take on the latest episode of The Ultimate Fighter.
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