Justin Edwards – Ultimate Fighter Season 13 Q&A Episode 5
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 5 (April 27, 2011):
1. Did your coach Junior Dos Santos spend a lot of time talking with you guys about match-ups and gameplans?
Justin Edwards – There definitely was some discussion in the locker room but the coaches told me that I matched up well with any of the other team’s fighters, so they were more concerned with getting the right match-ups for Mick Bowman and Zach Davis. The discussions started right after a fight because we typically only had one day before the next fight was announced.
2. The tension between JDS and Lew Polley looks like it is building; can you comment on the situation at this point in the season?
Justin Edwards – Let me say this first, I have a lot of respect for both of those coaches but you could definitely see that they had their differences. It started coming out a lot more during the practices and in my opinion most of that talk should have taken place behind closed doors and not out in the open. There was also tension between Lew and the other Brazilian coaches and I think he kind of felt like he was an outsider in the coaches room.
3. Team Lesnar keeps referring to Chris Cope as a “Traitor”; was he really giving your team gameplans, strengths and weaknesses about his teammates?
Justin Edwards – No he wasn’t, atleast not when I was there. I think it started when he knew that Keon Caldwell was leaving the show and he didn’t tell any of his teammates. We all knew what he was doing, for example he would go into the pantry to get a Gatorade bottle and then he would just stand there for 45 minutes trying to listen in on our team’s conversations. At our end of the house there were our bedrooms and then the kitchen/pantry, so if you weren’t cooking you really didn’t need to be hanging out there all of the time like he was. I don’t know if he caught on but when he would be hovering around I would start singing the ‘Secret Agent’ song from James Bond and then we all started doing it when he would come around and he started spending less time in our area.
4. Was your whole team in the same bedroom in the TUF house?
Justin Edwards – No, Team Lesnar had the whole upstairs and they were all in one bedroom and then our team had two bedrooms. Shamar Bailey, Ramsey Nijem and Ryan McGillivray in one (The Lotion Rubdown Room) and then Me, Zach, Javier Torres and Mick Bowman were in the other one.
5. Did you guys have any interaction with the ring girls when they were on the show for the fights?
Justin Edwards – They weren’t there every fight like what you see on the show. I think they were only there once or twice while on was there. They would get up there and do all three round octagon card shows before the fight even started and they would have all of us clapping and yelling and then she went and sat down and watched the fight. So no, we didn’t have any interaction with the ring girls but the yelling and clapping was easy for us after not seeing any girls for awhile.
6. What did you think of the Clay Harvison vs. Mick Bowman fight?
Justin Edwards – I was disappointed because I have trained with Mick before and I know that he is a really scrappy fighter and that he was able to stay with my aggressive style during sparring sessions. For some reason though, I don’t know if it was his nerves, he fought very tentative and didn’t really engage like he should have in that fight. It was kind of a shock to me because he really wanted to fight.
7. Your team was still up 3-2 at this point; did Bowman’s loss have any affect on the team morale?
Justin Edwards – Not really, we knew that Zach and myself are well-rounded fighters so we had a lot of confidence going into our fights regardless of the match-up. So even though we lost control and that we had one less guy moving on to the next round, morale was still high because both of us thought we would win our upcoming fights.
8. Was there any shit talk towards you or Chuck O’Neil about being replacement fighters?
Justin Edwards – There was from my team because when I first got on the show they told me to go and say hi to Dana White and so when I introduced myself to him his first words were “You’re not even supposed to fucking be here”. So I was like ok well thanks for the great opportunity and when we got back to the house I told my teammates what Dana had said to me. It kind of snowballed from there and they started calling me contestant 16 but it was mostly in fun and no-one meant any ill will by it. I think. Dana didn’t mean it like it sounded either, he was just trying emphasis what a great opportunity I had and that I better take advantage of it.
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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