Jake Mathews’ TUF Nations Sherblog

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“The Ultimate Fighter Nations: Canada vs. Australia” welterweight Jake Matthews (@JakeBJJMMA) will blog for Sherdog.com all season long, giving his thoughts, reactions and behind-the-scenes insights on the show. “The Ultimate Fighter Nations: Canada vs. Australia” (#TUFNations) airs each Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1 in North America, and Thursdays on FX at 4:30 p.m. AEDT (with a second airing at 10:30 p.m. AEDT) in Australia.

We are down to the second to last fight: it was frustrating to have to sit back and watch this scrap knowing that I had the chance to be in the semis. A win for Team Aus in this fight would be huge! Not only would it mean getting an Aussie in the Finale, but also some revenge for myself -- go get him, “Filthy”!

Richard Walsh is an awesome fighter and stylistically Olivier Aubin-Mercier is a good match up for him. He has the size and strength advantage, applies good pressure in a clinch and also has far better hands.

Tensions were running high after the defacing of our lockers and enough was enough. We just snapped. It may have been overboard, but we were seeing red and the moose was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the badger got to work with his field craft, surgically removing its head from its body.

Considering the moose is their national and a supposedly spiritual animal, despite the beheading we again didn’t get a reaction out of the Canadians. And again we were disappointed. But then again they have one stuffed and mounted on the wall back at the TUF house. Go figure.

Seeing as we only had a week left we decided to lap up as much of the snow as we could. We were trapped in the mother of all blizzards and couldn’t get to training, so we didn’t waste any time. We grabbed the sled which may have been an antique meant for display purposes only, but what the hell?

The Canucks had plenty of other stuff hanging on the walls. Even though Elias had only just fought Tyler, he didn’t hesitate to join us. I’d have to say out of all the Canadians, Elias has grown on us the most, so we’d like to make him an honorary Aussie.

We are all super confident that Rich has the tools to beat Olivier, and seeing the weigh in, it instilled that little bit extra. Rich dwarfed Ollie and has hair in places Ollie can only dream of. There was an obvious reach and strength advantage, which would serve Filthy well against the takedowns.

All that is left now is to get Rich rehydrated and ‘in the zone’ for the fight. Personally I can’t wait to see what it will bring.

Fight day! Despite the circumstances I’m pretty excited for this fight. We all cheered as loud as we could when Rich walked out, but the Canadians didn’t make a sound when Olivier walked into the gym. What a strange bunch they are.

The fight began and our confidence grew, as Rich landed some nice punches and was beginning to light Ollie up on the feet. Then it all began to turn around: Ollie shot in for the takedown, Rich seemed to defend well for a while but it ended up on the mat. In the scramble and back to his feet, Rich gave up his back, which left an opening for Ollie’s hook. Once that first hook was sunk in we began to get nervous: Jiu-jitsu wasn’t Rich’s strong suit and we hoped that he could get back to his feet, but Olivier sunk in the choke and that was that.

Ollie and his bloody koala bear fighting style … not exciting, but it got the job done.