Justin Edwards – Ultimate Fighter Season 13 Q&A Episode 8
By Dave Carpinello
The Ultimate Fighter Season 13‘s Justin Edwards (Team Junior Dos Santos) will be doing a Weekly Q&A for the readers of PDG. Justin will give his answers to your questions weekly beginning on April 13th. Justin has been fighting since 2006 and was chosen out of the alternate pool to join the lineup for season 13 of the Ultimate Fighter after Keon Caldwell quit the show to return to his family. Edwards has been training for the last five years under Scott Sheeley at the Ohio Fitness and Martial Arts Center and brings a professional record of 7-0 onto the show. Make sure to catch this weeks all new episode on Spike TV on Wednesday Night!
Questions Regarding Episode 8 (May 18, 2011):
1. What did you take from Brian Stann’s visit to the show and the speech that he gave at the TUF gym?
Justin Edwards – I took a couple of things from his speech, you know he came in and talked with all us and he was really great guy. They brought him in to give a big speech about the Marines since they are one of the show’s primary sponsors but he talked to Dana White and told him that if he talked all about the Marines that the fighters would lose interest and not want to hear about the fight stuff so they decided to skip that part of the speech/talk. He talked to us about the aspects of a fighter’s life from his perspective and personal experiences and how a lot of how he conducts himself came from his time in the Marines. It was pretty cool and all of the guys really appreciated him being there and I was definitely listening pretty intently. Brian was giving us a lot of information about what being a professional fighter really entails inside and out of the cage. It really changed my outlook on a fighter’s lifestyle and everything it involves to be successful. He really stressed commitment and dedication. Overall Brian was a really cool, down-to-earth guy during the 30-40 minutes he was at the gym.
2. So far on the show has anyone come really close to missing weight?
Justin Edwards – I am not 100% sure about the guys on Team Lesnar except for Chuck O’Neil. He was constantly cutting weight, re-hydrating, fighting, cutting weight, re-hydrating, fighting and I know he was having a tough time with the back to back fights. The heaviest guys on our team were Zach Davis and Ryan McGillivray and even though they were both a little heavy a few days out from their fights they really didn’t have any trouble cutting. A little known fact about our team was that Junior Dos Santos didn’t allow us to use the sauna during weight cut because he thought it took too much out of your body right before a fight so we were constantly working on keeping our weight in check.
3. Was Clay Harvison’s tapout against Ramsey Nijem the fastest tap ever?
Justin Edwards – I am not really sure but Clay got himself stuck in a hard spot. I don’t think that one of his strengths is being on the ground whether it is wrestling or jiu-jitsu. He exposed his back and if you let a high level wrestler like Ramsey get your back like that you are in for a long day. I think he took one punch before Ramsey took his neck and yeah it was a pretty quick tap. I don’t know the records of the The Ultimate Fighter show but Clay’s tapout was pretty fast.
4. How many hours a day did you guys actually practice and train?
Justin Edwards – Depending on the fight schedule we would have a two hour practice in the morning, then we would take a break at the house and then we would have another practice in the evening. We would get about four to five hours of training in each day and all of our practices were at the UFC training facility. We had access to just about every training machine/mechanism made including treadmills, ice baths, aerodynes, free weight machines, ropes, tires… you name it they had it at the training facility.
5. On a scale of 1-10, what was the shock level of your team when Chris Cope defeated Shamar Bailey?
Justin Edwards – I would have to say it was a 10. Everyone just assumed that Shamar was the better fighter all-around, better striker, better grappler, better jiu-jitsu and that he was faster and stronger than Cope. Cope is one of those guys though that gains confidence the longer the fight goes on and he was able to stay elusive and land more punches as the fight went on using his excellent cardio to keep Shamar off balance. Everyone on Cope’s team said his cardio was his strength and that he could go for days if need be. He seems to get better with every fight without looking great in any of them. The whole team was shocked and I actually didn’t get to watch it live because I was in the locker room warming up Ramsey. Someone came in after the fight and said that Shamar won round 1 and that he probably won round 2, then the coaches came in all pissed off because he lost.
6. At the end of last week’s show Shamar Bailey was shown talking to Dana White giving him excuses including a sprained back for his loss. What did you think about that when you saw it on TV?
Justin Edwards – I was surprised because that was the first time I saw his talk with Dana. I knew his back was bothering him because he was having trouble even bending over to pick his gloves up off the mat during practice. I’ll give him credit for that but I don’t think he was expecting the reaction Dana gave him in response to his explanation and did it make him look bad? I am not going to answer that because Shamar was one of the better guys on the show and he deserved to be there as one of the top fighters in the house.
7. Is Stripper Ramsey into other guys?
Justin Edwards – I knew this question would come up sooner or later. I don’t think he is, he is just one of those guys that likes to joke around like that. A lot of wrestlers have that personality of fooling around and acting a little homosexual and if he was in a room full of wrestlers they would have thought it was funny. You put him in a room of different people that haven’t been in that environment and it kind of rubs some of the guys the wrong way but Ramsey has had a girlfriend for a long time and he never hit on me and I am the prettiest one on our team.
Thanks for the questions guys, check out the Ohio Fitness and Martial Arts Center – Justin
Send in your questions and enjoy this week’s episode. You can submit your questions for Justin 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 Justin Edwards on his Facebook page.
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