Dan had seen my first fight in the prelims against Tommy Maguire and I suspected he wouldn’t have been overly impressed. I was pretty knackered after that fight - due to the nerves of fighting on the TUF show and infront of Dana White, Bisping, Henderson and Franklin, so I reckoned Dan probably thought I was out of shape.
To be honest, I wasn’t particularly bothered that Henderson chose me as first pick, there are good and bad sides to it. Fighting first, I knew that it would give me the next three weeks without having to worry about my weight, whereas everybody else had to do half a weight cut twice a week just in case they were picked to fight. So that was good for me, plus it gave me the chance to get Team UK off to the good start.
I’ve got to say, it makes it all the sweeter watching it back now, particularly after Mark Miller’s Muay Thai coach said I had no kicking game. That was a little ironic wasn’t it?
I think our approach to the fight surprised them in a quite a few ways. My conditioning stood up to the test, they obviously didn’t expect the kick, plus Dan had seen me fight southpaw in the past so we led them to believe that was how I’d fight Miller – I even stood southpaw at the weigh-in. I’m pretty lucky that I can fight either stance, so we just mixed it up a bit.
You definitely experience some unique emotions in the build-up to the fight, you feel the pressure of getting your team off to a good start. We were happy with the match-up though. As a team we had discussed our ideal match-ups and it was generally agreed that Miller was a good fit for me.
That obviously turned out to be true once we stepped inside The Octagon where, I’ve got to say, the coaching team is a major help. The majority of that first round took place right near the Team UK corner, there was a point when Bisping had to quieten our guys down, but looking back over all our fights during the course of the series I’m seriously impressed with how we all respond to the majority of the directions being barked out by Bisping. Saying that, when a guy’s got hold of your head and Bisping’s yelling at you to posture up – well, sometimes it's easier said than done!
Later in the fight there’s suggestions that Miller tapped under a guillotine but I actually don’t think he did. Even looking back at it now, I don’t think that’s a tap and I reckon the referee definitely did the right thing because that would have been seriously controversial. I’d much prefer to win decisively like I did.
In the end, it was Team UK who were celebrating after my fight, which was pretty sweet considering the ‘pranks’ the Americans had tried to play. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all up for some prankage, but their efforts were pretty lame and not even funny. Writing on a t-shirt and some boots? A bit childish really.
DaMarques Johnson seems to be leading those pranks, it’s amazing because you live with these guys but it’s not until you get out that you realise they’re a bit of a ****. Keep watching the bad blood between him and Bisping though, there’s more of that to come!
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