I am leaving for Vegas in a few hours for The Ultimate Fighter Finale. I have a couple friends that were in the house on this season so its really not a show that I could miss.

Tom Lawlor has been training on and off with us for years now. I trained with him long before he was even interested in MMA and have cornered for him at a couple local shows in Massachusetts. He has been out training with us at my gym for the last week for his fight with Kyle Kingsbury. Should be a classic striker versus wrestler fight and I am sure it will be interesting.

When I was out in Hilo with BJ and the guys out there, Shane Nelson was one of the best training partners I had to work with. I was so happy to hear that he was going to be on the show. Unfortunately I think Shane came into the show out of shape a little bit and it came back to haunt him. Have talked to him a couple times though and it sounds like he had a great training camp. I am actually going to be in the corner for Shane in his fight with George Roop.

A lot of people know that a few years back my brother Dan went out to Arizona and lived with Drew Fickett in Tucson. Well Dan made a bunch of good friends out there. Of those guys, Efrain Escudero was at the top of the list. I met Efrain out in Vegas for one of Drews fights and not only is he a great fighter, but he is hilarious too. Efrain had a fight while Dan was out there and Efrain took the kid down, took his back and choked him out pretty quickly. He proceeds to get on the microphone and start thanking his team for teaching him “the bottom”. Efrain was a great wrestler going into it and didnt use guard at all in the fight, but he still thanked his team for showing him some stuff from there. Efrain has a tough fight ahead against arguably “the next Anderson Silva” as everyone keeps saying. I still like his chances though and can’t wait to see the final fight of the show.

Should be a good week. I will try and get some pictures and video up from the trip.