Nick Osipczak
As series nine of The Ultimate Fighter goes to air, setanta.com will speak to one of the main characters from each week's episode.
Beginning with the preliminary fights to determine Team UK, setanta.com speaks exclusively to welterweight Nick Osipczak.
Once inside the house, we will then speak to the British fighter who succeeds or fails in each week's eliminator.
Don't miss a thing here, and email us any questions you would like us to put to the individual contestants.
Absolutely shocked to see Dave quit on his stool
We all expected Dave Faulkner to beat Frank Lester as he was looking really impressive in training and had amazing takedowns and ground game. We all thought he’d definitely be able to take Frank down and deal with him when he got him there. It seemed obvious that Dave would have his way with Frank in that fight.
As it turned out, Frank showed amazing heart and a warrior spirit and managed to outlast Dave. We knew going into the fight that Dave didn’t perform as well in fights as he did in training, but I think it still came as a shock to us to see him give up on the takedowns almost completely. I don’t think he went for even one in the second round.
Dave’s a terrific fighter, but he’s one of those guys that seems to find it difficult transferring his gym form onto the big stage. There are a few guys out there like that and it’s a difficult problem to overcome.
It was a great win for Frank Lester and he did well to come back from his first defeat. To be honest, though, I wasn’t too happy with the fact Lester was allowed back into the competition after his first defeat. Let’s face it, it’s team versus team, country versus country and both sides went into the show on an even playing field. If one of their guys doesn’t want to fight, it’s not our fault. We did our jobs. We all went on the show wanting to fight. Jason Pierce didn’t.
If one of their guys pulls out, we should get the automatic victory. I didn’t agree with them letting Lester back in the competition. It just didn’t seem fair on our boys. Pierce had the opportunity to fight and he chose not to. He wasn’t forced out of the competition.