TUF 16 Fighter Blog – Dom Waters Talks About Week 1 on the Ultimate Fighter

by Dom Waters – special to MMAWeekly.com

Hello world its your favorite TUF 16 contestant here Dom “Shonuff” Waters, here to give you my experience of the first episode and an insight behind the scenes.

So it’s early morning and I’m cutting weight, been dieting, so I’m a bit grumpy and my manager Tom Call is dropping me off at the airport to go to Las Vegas and try to make it on season 16 of The Ultimate Fighter. Tom says ‘hey Dom you don’t need any distractions so give me your phone’ I was like ok and tossed it to him, I flew to Vegas with James Chaney aka Snake.

We get to Vegas and James, Max Griffin, and I are all in the same van as we go to the Hotel. Soon as we arrive one of the behind the scenes guys takes me to my room and tells me I can’t leave, if I wanna eat order room service, and I have a slotted time to cut weight.

I wasn’t to worried about the weight cut, being that I was around 178, so they came and got me and a few other guys and drove us to a local gym, I ended up cutting for an hour and some change, got down to 173 and figured I could just float the rest off over night.

All I did was run on the treadmill and ride the Airdyne with my sweats on. They drop me back off at the hotel and say if I want a scale just ask and one will be delivered. Next morning I called for the scale and I was at 172.5, so I called for a different one and I was on point at 171.2, at that point I was just ready to weigh in.

The guys got us all in a few vans and we drove to weigh ins set around for a bit while the doctors and everyone else got set up. I was watching people panic because they were having a hard time getting down to weight, me I was just chilling.

I weigh in and staredown my opponnet, and I was just feeling calm and not worried about a thing. After the weigh ins we had a feast and got fight shorts and gloves. At that point it hit me, this is a big fight, so I told myself let’s make a statement.

The next day I woke up ready to conquer the world feeling like a million bucks. We get to the Mandalay Bay where the fights are being held, and Roy Nelson’s coaches are in my corner “Blue” I warmed up with Jeff Mayweather and Anthony “Hitman” Brown I was ready to go out and make a statement and that is exactly what I did. But I remember the walk out it was like I was walking on air but when that bell rang it was time to work.

I hit Kevin with a good three punch combo and kept moving he came in again and I caught him with a 2,3 (straight right, left uppercutt) and he fell so I followed him to the ground with hammer fist. After the fight I was shouting I got the brahs in my corner referring to Mayweather, Ron Fraizer, and Anthony “Hitman” Brown.

When I went back to the locker room everyone was clapping. I got my things and watched the rest of the fights. After the fights we went to the cage Dana told us what he thought and said now every fight is our most important fight.

He said Mike Ricci, James Chaney, Mike hill, and I had great fights.

When we got to the house it was crazy the first night was a blast. Then team picks come and Roy picks me first. Both the teams looks amazing in my opinion, its going to be one heck of a season tune in every Friday to FX and support us.

And follow me on twitter @shonuff89.