My Brother was on a recent episode of the Tapout show… and the whole thing came off terribly.
Training Hard on Tuesday when the fight is Friday? Terrible idea. The Tapout crew showed up on Monday when the fight was on Friday. What kind of training footage did they really expect to get? They wanted shark baits with fresh guys 4 days before the fight? Are they nuts? I love how they act like the authority on training and fighting when they would even suggest this. We do shark baits like this… when its not 4 days before the fight. Had they come the week before, you would have seen plenty of that. You would have seen one fresh guy after another rotating on Dan to work on his cardio and conditioning.
Going to Sityodtong was never something we wanted to do. Dan didnt want to go, but they pushed the issue and Dan finally caved to make them happy. They were not doing anything different than what we do… but we arent training like that the week of the fight. Mask offers his words of wisdom with “I like how he changes levels” like we have never seen someone shoot a double before. I am not sure who Mask thought he was talking to, but you dont get into the UFC when you have never seen a wrestler. Dan didnt really want to be there because I was fighting Kenny a few months later, and I am sure they felt the same way. There has been a lot of tension between the camps for some time and its definitely healthy competition more so than actually dislike… but its weird for everyone involved when that happens.
They did a horrible job of cutting up audio and chopping it into their own little story. They take bits of pieces of what everyone says, twist it out of context and then splice in clips of Dan saying “yea… yup… okay” to make it all seem the way they want to portray it.
Dan was training with Guido, the 15 year, old a few days before the fight. Now does Guido really offer any bit of a challenge? Absolutely not. However, Dan was there to sweat out and lose weight and just move around. It didnt matter who he was working out with and Guido loves the beatings so Dan was rolling around with him. But obviously, they make it seem like Guido is Dans primary training partner.
The whole “I am so sad my corners are going to be late” angle was pretty hypocritical as well. Dans corners were not going to be there right when the show started, but they were there in plenty of time to get him prepared for his fight. This was Dans 11th fight and he had the other guys from the gym there with him. He wasnt sitting alone in a corner somewhere, but thank god he didnt sit down for a moment without other people in the show or I am sure Tapout would have shown Dan sitting all alone as they played some sad and depressing music.
They made the gyms, the trainers and the training partners all look like garbage. I started at this gym and have done well training out of there… and Dan has too along with a bunch of other guys. We are doing pretty good for a small gym and didnt need to be shit on like that.
Was it good TV? Maybe for some. Was it a load of bullshit? Absolutely.