For Myles Jury, this past season of The Ultimate Fighter was an emotional roller coaster.
He was a favorite for the welterweight season back in 2011 but tore his ACL right at the beginning of filming and was forced to leave the show without ever getting an opportunity to compete in the house.
After dropping down to lightweight, and despite not having fought in well over a year, he was invited back for this past season of The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) Live on FX. Jury would make it into the house, but would drop his round of 16 fight to eventual finalist Al Iaquinta in the show's "Fight of the Season" winner.
Being a part of Team Cruz, Jury soaked in as much knowledge and training as he could and it paid off on the finale where he dominated Chris Saunders and improved his first round stoppage victory streak to 10.
"The Fury" was recently a guest on Bloody Elbow Radio where he talked about his experiences in the TUF house, his future and finally getting back to civilization.
Check it out:
Matt Bishop: How does it feel to be a part of civilization again?
Myles Jury: It feels great, but at the same time, kind of weird because people are looking at me and I'm looking for cameras all the time yet. I'm not in the house anymore. It feels amazing to be out, but I'm still getting used to regular society.
Matt Bishop: What was your time there like? How invasive are the cameras in the house?
Myles Jury: The cameras in the house are a 24/7 thing, man. When you go to the bathroom, there's a camera above you. You've got your mic on for any time you're talking. There'd be times where we'd be sleeping in the middle of the night and two guys would just be whispering and the cameras would come in, turn on all the lights and wake everybody up just to catch what they were saying. It's crazy, man. Definitely an experience.
Matt Bishop: You lost in the preliminary rounds, a very tough fight to Al Iaquinta but you rebounded last Friday against Chris Saunders. What did you do in the house after you lost that fight and how did you stay focused for the rest of your time there?
Myles Jury: You have two choices when you lose a fight in The Ultimate Fighter house and I talked about this a lot with Sam Sicilia and other guys that ended up losing. You can either go crazy and do something stupid and maybe get kicked off or you can just suck it up as a loss and learning experience and focus on getting better both mentally and physically and that's what I did.
Brian Hemminger (MMAmania.com): You had the knee injury from TUF 13 and you came back from that. The fight to get into the house was actually your first official fight since that knee injury. Did that add anything mentally to get over, not wanting to go crazy to get into the house?
Myles Jury: Oh yeah, it's just another thing. It was another mental thing that was stacked up against me. That's why this last win was so emotional for me. I came from nothing. I hurt my knee.. I had no money, my career was in shambles, I didn't know when I was gonna fight and I experience so much coming from the bottom and now that I'm back, winning my first UFC fight, being a fighter in the UFC. Even the Iaquinta fight, that was my first ever three round fight since the surgery and that was rough too.
Brian Hemminger (MMAmania.com): They take away all your personal stuff when you get into the house. What I want to know is, when you got your phone back after you left the house, how many text messages and voice mails did you have on that thing?
Myles Jury: My voice mail was full and messages were just going off like crazy. Twitter too and facebook, it literally took two days of sitting in the hotel room trying to get back in touch with everybody and the fans that contacted me. Friends, family and whatnot, I tried to do my best to get my responses. It took me a while, but I got it done.
Brian Hemminger (MMAmania.com): Something else I want to know, you finally really got back into that groove on the finale. You had nine first round finishes before your knee injury and you come onto the finale and BAM, you were back to your first round finishing self. Did you feel like you were back again with that fight?
Myles Jury: Just for that fight, I really felt like I was making the right choices in life and taking the right steps that I'm on the right track I know I've got a lot of work to do and I'll face some challenges but I definitely feel like I'm back on track and I can't wait to get back to training and get down there.
Brian Hemminger (MMAmania.com): Your buddy and teammate Jeremy Stephens has been putting in a lot of time with Alliance MMA. You were a part of Dominick Cruz's team on the show, do you expect to be working with them quite a bit as well on top of Victory MMA for your forseeable future?
Myles Jury: Yeah, I'll mostly be with Alliance, but I'll definitely still be making trips to Victory. Those guys are like family to me also. That's the best way to do it. I'm young, don't have it all figured out and the same thing with Jeremy. We both see eye to eye and you can have your core team but you've got to bounce it around a bit, mix it up and the moment you get comfortable training is the moment you get a loss. You've got to stay uncomfortable in training.
Brian Hemminger (MMAmania.com): And how long after they released you from the show did you kill your first zombie?
Myles Jury: (laughs) As soon as I got home, I killed my first zombie. Even after they released us from the show, I was still trapped up there in Vegas but I definitely killed some zombies and I'll probably kill some more to be honest.
Matt Bishop: What is the biggest thing that you're gonna take from your experience in the house and what was the biggest thing you learned in those 13 weeks?
Myles Jury: The biggest thing I learned about those 13 weeks was my mental game is a lot more important than I thought. When I go out there and compete and just fight the fight in front of me, especially at this high level with Cruz and all these guys around me, the mental toughness was what I got out of it the most I would say.
You can follow Myles on twitter @FuryJury.
So what do you think, Maniacs?
Were you expecting Jury to go further during his stint on The Ultimate Fighter Live? After scoring that first round stoppage on the finale, what do you make of his potential?
Sound off!