If there is one fight, more than any other in my MMA career, that has left me with nothing but complete frustration...it is the defeat to DaMarques Johnson on The Ultimate Fighter.
When we talked about match-ups as a team ahead of the show’s first fight, I actually wanted to fight Mark Miller – the man beaten by Nick Ozipczak. I wanted a proper dust-up with him. He would have been my first choice and we had both joked about a ‘battle of the beards’ with the loser having to shave his off.
But the coaches looked at things differently so they paired me up with DaMarques Johnson which, again, I was pretty happy with because we knew I could break him down in the stand-up, using my wrestling abilities to stuff his takedown attempts. It would have worked too if I had stuck to the gameplan!
Looking back on the fight, I wrote in a journal every day when I was out there and on the night of the fight I couldn’t remember how it had ended up on the floor. I actually wrote ‘somehow it hit the deck’.
It wasn’t until I watched it back that I realised I took him down, which shows I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for that fight. If you look, my footwork is unusual too – my head wasn’t in the right place for that fight.
What actually happened was, I saw the octagonal line that is inside of The Octagon, felt I was getting backed up a little too far and instinctively shot for the takedown. DaMarques then went for a kimura, but I pulled my arm out and suddenly realised that he actually felt pretty weak. The problem is, when I feel that, I get a little arrogant. Instead of standing the fight up, I stayed there and got complacent and you all saw the outcome.
I’ve watched it with mates, family and so on since and it frustrates me so much. Everything I trained for all got wasted because I ignored my gameplan. My posture was terrible, and when he threw up the triangle choke I did the worst thing possible by going for the slam.
It’s the worst way to lose. If somebody’s better than you, you can take it, but I genuinely believe I have what it takes to beat DaMarques – I just messed up big time.
I’ll tell you something, I’d fight for free if The UFC offered me the chance to rematch that guy. That’s how frustrated I am by the loss. In fact, I’d pay for that opportunity. Especially being away from those conditions, the weird situation where your emotions are flying around and you don’t have your usual corner team – I think the outcome would be very different.
It’s not excuses, because I should have been able to keep things under control – but I know that I didn’t show even a fraction of my best.
Hopefully The UFC will give me the chance to prove that, I haven’t heard anything from them yet but I have received plenty of support on websites and so on due to the absence of Michael Bisping on the day.
Bisping will explain on the forthcoming show the reason behind his absence so I won’t reveal anything just yet, but there is absolutely no animosity between us – he came to train with some of us earlier in the week, he’s a good bloke and I accept his reason for not being at my fight. He feels bad about it, but it was me in The Octagon, he had prepared me really well, so I can’t blame his absence. The only thing is, Bisping would probably have given me earache until I stood the fight back up, so maybe I missed him there!
I don’t want to dwell on it though. I feel like I let the UK down, but now all I can do is focus on getting payback whenever I next get the chance to fight. And there will be payback.
To visit Dean's official website, go to www.deanamasinger.com.
To hear more from him on his exit from TUF 9, as well his views on Andre Winner, watch the video below.