I’m down 3-1 entering this week, but I never really thought that I picked the wrong guys, to be honest. I put it on me and what I’ve been doing wrong. I love my group of guys, no doubt about it. I just wondered why they weren’t winning fights. Every time after we lost, I just went back and tried to figure out what I needed to change up so my guys could come away with some victories.

I got word that Mac Danzig was getting on Blake Bowman for his loss and I didn’t like it. Mac’s the only one that’s won so far, so to have him going after his own teammates is terrible for morale and terrible for the team aspect. I can’t really say I came down on Mac, but I did have a little talk with him in front of everybody and I know he wasn’t happy about it and this and that, and that I didn’t hear the whole story, but I didn’t need to hear the whole story. I heard from the guys on the team what happened, and I didn’t come down on Mac hard enough where I needed to know his story. I just knew the facts. He’s one of the guys that doesn’t like to be called out like that in front of everybody, but I felt I needed to. Mac is gonna need his whole team later on in the show and I want the whole team to be there for him because I got wind that some of them were just getting fed up with what he was saying.

Unfortunately, we got news this week that Paul Georgieff’s cousin had passed away. I had it about as easy as I could have it because all I did was hand the phone to Paul. His mom wanted to tell him, so it could have been a lot worse for me. But as soon as he hung up, I was like ‘hey, I’m sorry to hear it,’ and I tried to console him as much as I could. And I just reassured him that he’s got some great teammates that are gonna have his back no matter what happens. As a coach, I’m not there as much as his teammates are. He’s living with his teammates and I wanted to reassure him that he had guys who were gonna be around him 24 hours a day and that were willing to help him anyway they could.

Speaking of help, I’ve had a lot of it with my assistant coaches this season. I brought in the guys I did because I knew they were all gonna play a part and were all gonna do very well with their part.

I brought Robbie Lawler in because he’s kind of a muscle man. As a head coach I’ve got to sit back and watch everything. I can’t really specialize as much as I’d like to. But with Robbie Lawler there, he gets to go in there, get hands on with the guys, and he can help them in so many ways. About halfway through, I stopped yelling at my guys when I’m cornering them and I sat behind Robbie, and whenever I told Robbie to say something, he said it. So before my guys went out there, they knew this and they were concentrating on Robbie’s voice and not mine. But when I’m sitting behind Robbie, I’m not worried about projecting my voice. All I have to do is sit and digest and then talk to Robbie, and he worries about making sure the guys can hear him. So Robbie played a very significant part. Also, Robbie’s got a great personality and the guys really liked him right off the bat, and they could relate to him. If the guys had a problem, sometimes they’d talk to him about it and he’d kinda set them straight on why they were doing this or that. Robbie was definitely that guy they could relate to and talk to if they needed to.