Andy Main – Ultimate Fighter Season 12 Q&A Episodes 7 & 8
By Dave Carpinello
The Ultimate Fighter Season 12’s Andy Main (Team Koscheck) will be doing a Weekly Q&A for the readers of PDG. Andy will give his answers to your questions weekly beginning on September 20th. Main is a 21-year-old out of Rockaway, N.J. with a record of 4-1 who fights out of AMA Fight Club and enters the house as both the youngest and most inexperienced fighter on the show this season. A former track star and skateboarder, Main has been fighting since 2009. Make sure to catch this weeks all new episode on Spike TV on Wednesday Night!
Questions Regarding Episodes 7 & 8 (October 27th & November 3rd, 2010):
1. What did you think about the whole Brad Tate, ‘Male Nurse’ and Josh Koscheck situation?
Andy Main – What they don’t show is that Brad Tate had actually been there since the beginning and he was acting like that the whole time, I found it to be very disrespectful towards Koscheck. Tate had been an instigator the whole time he was there and it wasn’t really until you saw Koscheck push him that it got a lot of attention. The whole ordeal was actually funny until the mess that happened at the weigh-ins. Just before that in the hallway, Tate was making fun of the Armenians (Sako & Sevak) about their accents and about Sevak losing and I think a switch just flipped in Koscheck’s head and he got very defensive. That is one thing that I can say about Koscheck, he treated us almost like family and he was very defensive of the guys on our team.
2. How heated was the exchange between Dane Sayers and Koscheck off camera?
Andy Main – After the whole incident took place, I mean it was a little scrap and Dane got in the middle of it and when tempers flare like that you are not always thinking clearly. Even someone as brash as Koscheck knew he shouldn’t be attacking someone like that and he knew it immediately after it happened. Koscheck didn’t mean to push Dane and he never had a problem with him during the show and he did go and sort of apologize and nothing really came of it. The big thing with Dane is that he had just lost his fight and he was a very emotional guy anyways and he was having a harder time than most of the other guys adjusting to living in the house (he had a one-year old kid at home and had no contact with his family). So I think it was just a combination of things that set him off and lead to him walking away but after a few of us talked him I think he was a lot better.
3. What did you think of your teammate Sako Chivitchian’s win over Dane Sayers?
Andy Main – It was really interesting because almost nobody was giving Dane a chance to win the fight because of how he looked in his first fight to get into the house but the guy he fought (Ariel Sexton) was a tough, legit fighter that I heard was supposed to be good. Dane beat him though and although he didn’t have the same skill set as some of the other fighters in the house, he was probably the biggest guy in the house and he was tough. I don’t think Sako underestimated him but I do think that he thought he would be able to control Dane and beat him quickly. When Sako got caught in that guillotine choke early in the fight, then escaped, he went into a more defensive approach to the fight as opposed to going for the finish. Obviously it worked out for him, even though some people thought he should have been deducted a point for grabbing the fence, it wouldn’t have mattered because he won both rounds so it still would have been 19-18. Dane went out there though and showed that he could hang with a fighter like Sako and if Dane had been able to throw more strikes it may been a different fight. It wasn’t the most exciting fight but I enjoyed it.
4. Your team finally won some cash when Koscheck won the Coach’s Challenge (Homerun Derby). How did it feel to win something finally?
Andy Main – Yeah, that was awesome. A lot of people have speculated and I have heard the rumor before that the Coach’s Challenge happens late in the season so that the challenge could favor the coach that is not having the most success with the fights. So the speculation is that baseball was picked to favor Koscheck over GSP because our team was getting beaten so badly in the cage. I don’t know if it is true but you couldn’t have picked a worse sport for GSP, he said he had never even held a baseball bat before but he actually didn’t do that bad. They didn’t show it on TV but there was a practice round and GSP actually won that but then Koscheck found his rhythm when the challenge started and he smoked GSP. Whenever we had a chance to get out of that house it was awesome and of course it was nice to win some cash.
5. Did you guys have access to endless booze in the house?
Andy Main – Yes, we had a fully stocked beer fridge at all times and then you could request any kind of hard alcohol that you wanted. If was pretty funny because I always joked that they wanted us to drink so that there would be drama in the house and I honestly believed that because you would pull a beer out of the fridge and almost immediately that one beer was already restocked. In addition to the beer fridge, the pantry was stocked with six-packs of beer and if you grabbed a six-pack and then went back into the pantry, it had already been replaced in no more than a half-hour.
6. What was it like when the Wildcard picks were announced and you weren’t chosen for a second chance at fighting?
Andy Main – I was pretty much devastated because honestly knowing now that Dane was in running, I thought he was a strong contender but what everyone on their team including Dane told us, I think they spun it differently on TV, was that Dane had broke his nose in his first fight to get into the house, he was icing it all of the time and his team told us that it bleed if the wind blew. So everyone assumed it was broken but Dane didn’t want to get it checked out because if it was broken he would have been kicked off. So we were told that GSP wasn’t going to give him the wildcard because of his nose and so even though he would have been a legitimate contender he was out of the running.
When they picked Aaron Wilkinson it really wasn’t a big surprise, even though he wasn’t the most skilled fighter, he did have one of the more exciting fights when he lost to Michael Johnson. Everyone thought the second pick would come down to Jeff Lentz, Marc Stevens and I. Jeff was pretty much out of the running though because he hadn’t stayed in shape, he was always drinking and smoking and despite him saying he wanted the Wildcard, he really didn’t and the coaches told us they wouldn’t pick him anyways. So the assumption then was that it would come down to Marc or me and he was choked out in his fight in just a few seconds and he didn’t even think that he would be picked so he let his weight get up to 180 lbs. I was cutting weight and doing cardio everyday with Aaron because we thought that we would be fighting eachother. Then when they called Marc’s name I was blown out of the water. If they would have said Jeff or Dane it would have made more sense because on the first day Dana White came out and said they were going to pick the Wildcards based on their performance in the fights. Then he came out and said they were going to pick the fighters they thought were more well rounded, so if that was the criteria I can see why Marc was picked but that wasn’t the original criteria that Dana told us.
A lot of us think that the criteria was changed because of Koscheck’s influence and the fact that he didn’t want to look bad because his first pick lost so bad in his first fight. It was disappointing and pretty much everyone in the house wasn’t happy about the decision.
7. How was it when you returned to training knowing you were likely done for the season?
Andy Main – For me at that point, you just have to look at what you do have and not what you don’t. They were all cool guys for the most part and you can see in the episodes that I was working with them so that they would be ready for their fights. I had a couple of weeks left and so I just wanted to get the most out of the rest of a great opportunity. There is always the chance that someone gets injured, so you just try to look on the bright side and hope for the best. If it doesn’t happen I will still be a better fighter when I leave the show.
8. Did you feel any vindication or redemption when Marc Stevens got choked out again, this time by Wilkinson?
Andy Main – I wouldn’t say redemption, that the fact that Stevens fought didn’t necessarily mean that I wanted him to lose because in all honesty Stevens is a better fighter than Aaron. Just because he didn’t perform well on the show doesn’t mean he isn’t a good fighter, I have fought on the same card as him before and so I know he is a good fighter. He is a brown belt in jiu-jitsu and he knows how to fight, fighting on the show is totally different, you don’t have your normal camp, you don’t have your normal coaches, nothing is the same. He just couldn’t perform well under the circumstances, so I was more disappointed in the coaches and Dana for picking Marc over someone else but it didn’t mean I wanted him to lose. He looked really good in the first round and then he gassed out in the second round and I think that goes back to what I said earlier about him gaining a lot of weight because he didn’t think he would be picked. So he had to cut 25-30 pounds two days before the fight after already cutting weight twice before that during the season. Hopefully Dana and them are thinking that they made the wrong choice but unfortunately it doesn’t change anything for me.
Thanks for the questions, check out AMA Fight Club and Renzo Gracie – Andy
Send in your questions and enjoy this week’s episode. You can submit your questions for Andy by sending them to admin@punchdrunkgamer.com and he will answer them each week following the next show on Spike TV! You can also find more information on Andy Main at Facebook/AndyMain.
