Andy Main – Ultimate Fighter Season 12 Q&A Episodes 9 & 10
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 9 & 10 (November 10th & 17th, 2010):
1. What are your thoughts on how the quarter-final fights went?
Andy Main – I am going to give you guys my thoughts on each one of the quarter-final fights that took place on the last two episodes.
Jonathan Brookins vs. Sako Chivitchian: I was not at all surprised that Brookins was able to defeat Sako, as time went on in the house it became evident that Brookins was probably going to be the guy that you would have beat to win the show. Sako and Sevak have such similar fighting styles that I almost expected Brookins to win the way he did. Brookins brought in the same game plan for Sako that he did for Sevak and the results were nearly identical and once again I was impressed with his performance.
Nam Phan vs. Cody McKenzie: I expected Nam to win this fight but what surprised me was how well Cody fought in the first round and I give a lot of that credit to GSP and his team of coaches for the gameplan going into this fight. Had Cody come into the fight swinging wildly like he had in the past, the fight would probably have been over sooner but he stayed with gameplan for awhile, pushing the smaller Nam Phan against the cage Randy Couture style. Using that style and the fact that Cody didn’t have best cardio to begin with, caused him to gas out heading into the second round. Cody spent a lot of energy trying to pull Nam down to the ground, when in retrospect he should have just continued using his dirty boxing style because Nam was having a hard time getting off the cage.
Kyle Watson vs. Aaron Wilkinson: Match-ups have made these fights go a certain way and I don’t think that Kyle was getting as much credit as he deserved. In my opinion this fight served notice that Kyle is one of the better fighters in the house. A lot of people thought that Aaron beat Michael Johnson in the first two rounds and that there never should have been a third round. Then when Aaron got the wildcard pick, he came out and beat Marc Stevens, who was Koscheck’s first pick. So Aaron had two really good fights against the top two picks on the show and then Kyle came out and walked right through him. I think that performance spoke for itself and like I said, I just don’t think Kyle gets the credit that he deserves.
Michael Johnson vs. Alex Caceres: There were a couple of things that stood out about this fight. A lot of people that watched that fight are going be thinking about one of two things, either that Johnson isn’t really as good as everybody thinks he is because the fight was a lot closer than most expected it to be or that Alex is a lot better of a fighter than people thought he was because he put up a good fight. I think it was little bit of both and Johnson’s gameplan of take him down, let him up didn’t help Johnson because it almost looked like Alex was just able to get up, throw some punches and it made Alex look better than he actually was. I think that Johnson could have kept Alex down but he just chose not to and who knows what would have happened, I think he deserved and the win and I think he deserved to move forward in the competition. It was an exiting fight and the animosity between the two was crushed after that fight and that was good for everyone.
2. What did you think of Koscheck celebrating like he won the lottery after Nam Phan’s victory?
Andy Main – That is how he was from the beginning, emotional and outspoken when he won anything and it is something that I have brought up before here and in other interviews. Nam’s victory over Cody wasn’t really what Koscheck was celebrating, he was celebrating a victory over GSP and that is what it always came to, it is just how Koscheck was but the other side to that involved Brad Tate (male nurse). After their incident, Koscheck went up and apologized to Tate for choking him but told him that he could say whatever he wanted to Koscheck but that he better leave his fighters out of it and not make fun of them and talk shit to them. Then you see Koscheck constantly talking smack to Cody, which in my book is hypocritical and that is the worse than his celebration.
3. We haven’t seen “Male Nurse” Brad Tate for a couple of weeks now, did GSP send him home?
Andy Main – Yes, GSP told him that he wasn’t allowed back until the semi-final fights. Other than that he wasn’t allowed back and I thought it pretty funny actually.
4. What was the level of frustration on your team like when GSP rolled out another marquee name coach, Freddie Roach?
Andy Main – It was getting extremely frustrating at this point in the season and I think that you will see more of it on this week’s episode. We had a good group of coaches at the beginning when Koscheck brought in “Crazy” Bob Cook, Javier Mendez, Daniel Cormier and others but there was really no consistency throughout the season and Freddie Roach is a well known trainer and that is why they showed him on the episode but GSP was bringing in trainers/fighters every other day. He had Freddie Roach, Greg Jackson, John Danaher, a slew of blackbelts, dozens of wrestlers from the Canadian Olympic team. It was ridiculous and our team practiced after their team and we would walk in to see these guys getting off the mat and there was literally so many coaches that the coaches had to sit and take turns working with the fighters on Team GSP. By the end of the time that we were there it was literally us, Koscheck, but he had stopped training with us and Cormier but he was 240 pounds. So you could talk to him but not spar or roll live with him because of his size and Javier was still there occasionally to work hands with us, so it was very frustrating. Freddie Roach was just the icing on the cake.
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.
