Submission Puts Kolosci In Quarter-finals; Scarola Leaves Show
By Brian Knapp
The nice guy will not finish last on season six of “The Ultimate Fighter” reality series.
John Kolosci, the cast member everyone seems to like, became the third entrant into the quarter-finals, as he submitted a wide-eyed Billy Miles with a first-round guillotine choke on episode three. Kolosci (8-4) joins Team Serra teammate Matt Arroyo and Team Hughes’ Mac Danzig in the round of eight.
“Besides the birth of my daughter and my fiancée saying yes, this is the third biggest day of my life,” Kolosci said.
Kolosci secured an early takedown against Miles (2-1), weathered a reversal and ultimately lulled the Californian into a false sense of security on the ground. As Miles repositioned himself inside Kolosci’s guard, the 32-year-old Indianan quietly slipped his arms underneath his opponent’s chin, rose to a standing position against the cage and finished the fight with the choke. The tapout came 2:56 into the first round, despite the fact that Miles appeared to be slipping from Kolosci’s grasp.
“It looked like Billy choked … no pun intended,” said UFC President Dana White, cracking a sarcastic smile at the beaten welterweight’s expense. “He got caught in a basic submission that he could have gotten out of, and he tapped to it.”
A youth correctional counselor in California with three professional bouts under his belt, Miles conceded the UFC stage got the best of him. “I was nervous,” he said. “It is what it is.” The 29-year-old last fought in 2004, when he was submitted by current IFL middleweight contender Matt Horwich under the Sportfight banner.
Despite Kolosci’s victory, all was not well inside Coach Matt Serra’s camp. The soap opera that was Joey Scarola finally reached a conclusion, as the 28-year-old Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt walked away from the show and, apparently, his full-time job at Serra’s gym. He left despite continued pleas from Serra, who begged his pupil to rethink his decision.
“I told him, ‘You walk out that door … you have a nice life back home teaching at my school; there’s going to be repercussions,’” Serra said. “You can’t go through life thinking that you can just do this and everything’s going to be rosy. I can’t have people wanting to join and train with me, saying, ‘Hey, I want to be a quitter, too.’”
Serra’s longtime protégé, Pete Sell, did what he could to knock some sense into Scarola, who spent the last two weeks pining over the life he had left behind. Sell’s words, like Serra’s, fell on deaf ears.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “You’re throwing your life away. You know how many people have nothing in other countries? You look at people like that. Do you really have it that bad?”
Not even a visit from White, who had just returned from UFC 72 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, could sway Scarola’s one-track mind.
“I’ve known Joey for a long time,” White said. “I like this kid. When you walk out of this house, and you don’t do what you came here to do, it’s over. You’re never going to be in the UFC again. You’ve never seen, over the last five seasons, somebody get up and walk out that door and come back and fight in the UFC. It just doesn’t happen.”
As in season’s past, the house was victimized by the potent mixture of alcohol and testosterone. Drunken cast members, fueled by sake and boredom, proceeded to wreck the million-dollar mansion where the show is shot, as they hurled paint onto the walls and sent a rubber mannequin hurdling into the pool.
“Before you knew it, everybody starts drinking,” Arroyo said. “Fifteen minutes later, everybody’s smashed.”
The tone of the latest installment took on a serious tone, however, as former UFC Welterweight Champion Matt Hughes, his showdown with current title holder Serra on the horizon, announced to his team that he likely had only two or three fights left before he calls it a career.
