Hey guys, Stephen Bass, TUF Season 14 contestant here.  Let me start off by saying thanks to MMA Valor for putting together this blog for me.  I’d also like to thank everyone else involved in my success up to this point and all you MMA fans because without you none of this would have ever been possible. 

WARNING: I still haven’t watched the fights, I was too busy kissing hands and shaking babies at my viewing party to watch the fights so this is going to be an about Stephen Bass blog this week.   And….. So without further introduction, Stephen Bass.  I’m just a kind-hearted country boy who stumbled onto MMA and fell in love.  I worked in construction for nearly a decade before finding MMA at the age of 22.  All things considered I was a pretty successful and happy individual, dabbling in boxing thru the years to get my thrills.  Then about 6 years ago things changed when I ran across Muhsin Corbbrey, he was the first Mixed Martial Artist I had ever met, and the rest as they say, is history.

Fast forward sixish years later to Sept 21^st, 2011 for the premiere of TUF 14, which I’m a cast member on!

First of all, it’s freaking awesome to be one of the first 16 chosen to represent the featherweight division on TUF, I FINALLY feel like all the hard work has started to pay off.  To be honest, I still haven’t watched anyone else’s fights but my own so I’ll give you my take on my fight and the whole experience.

It started to sink in to me that I was about to fight on The Ultimate Fighter TV show in front of Dana White for a chance to earn a UFC contract when I went to the sauna for the first time after arriving in Vegas.  I shared some intimate sauna time with two of the bantamweights that made it into the house, TJ Dillashaw and Roland Delorme, the night before weigh-ins.  I wish you all could have seen the male posturing going on between these two after we established that they were both bantamweights!   I’d also like to thank the hotels kitchen for sending me a 5 lb fruit tray that night, it was fun trying to sweat those extra lbs off the next day, not really though.

Stephen Bass vs Karsten Lenjoint

Anyone that’s ever been in a dressing room with me knows that I’m probably going to sleep until about thirty minutes before my fight so I can’t give you much account of that part of it either.  Next thing I know I’m warming up and headed out to mix it up with Karsten.  Walking out of the dressing room and into the Mandalay Bay Event Center to see Dana White, Michael Bisping, and Mayhem Miller watching on, this was a pretty proud moment for me.  That got cut short when I noticed the other fighter, Karsten, already in the cage with intentions of beating me up!

So they lock the gates and Rosenthal asks each of us if we’re ready and we get to work. We had a good back and forth fight for about 8 minutes but the premiere only showed a measly 20 seconds of the entire fight, hosed!  If you guys want to see the whole fight you can do so right here.

Check it out and tell me what you think and thanks for reading.  Feel free to ask me any questions you might have and I’ll answer them if I can.  Until next week.

Stephen “Bigfish” Bass will be exclusively blogging on MMAValor.com every Thursday during the TUF 14 season. Make sure to follow Stephen on Twitter @StephenBassTUF and check out his website at http://stephenbass.tv/