it was the day before the auditions and they didn't have enough bully auditions lined up. The kid Facebook messaged me and asked if I could get to their Times Square office the next day, we went to school on Staten Island and we made it happen (making up and rehearsing our stories on the ferry on the way there.)

I portrayed myself as a loudmouth douche who was obsessed with beer and pissing on people.

Long story short they fly us out to Utah the first week of June 2010, we shoot all these vignettes with Mayhem over the course of 3 days, they're feeding me lines and patting me on the back and telling me "dude you're killing it keep it up." It's not real and everyone seems in on the joke.

Until the fight.

On the fourth day they shuttle me to this warehouse. They "train" me with Jeremy Horn for about 30 minutes, hitting the bag and everything while filming. As if that was going to prepare me for getting bulldozed by a world class athlete like Cormier.

I had Big John McCarthy for a ref. Like there was actually any officiating going on.

The first round was supposed to be takedowns and submission. I used all five of my tapouts in like 90 seconds. I wrestled in high school and college too so I was really trying to shoot on him, but he only slammed my face in the mat everytime. The last take down he took he shot a double leg on me, walked around the makeshift octagon with me over his shoulder, and slammed me. Hard. As soon as he applied the push choke I tapped and that ended the round.

The second round was strikes. It started with Cormier kicking me in the stomach with what felt like seven baseball bats. I truly just wanted to call my mom and cry and crawl in bed right there. McCarthy asked me if I was ok, I said I was, we kept going and Cormier was hitting me with these brutal jabs in the face and I cowered over and McCarthy stopped it.

It was awful. And the shitty part is that everything up until the fight was bogus so I thought the fight was going to be bogus too. But the fight was way real and I got manhandled by a legitimate UFC title contender in a dark warehouse in Salt Lake City.