Exclusive: TUF’s Amir Sadollah Talks Reality TV, Being the Guy People Want to Fight, and More

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Amir Sadollah came into season seven of “The Ultimate Fighter” without a single professional MMA bout to his credit, and yet with the show winding down he finds himself in the semifinals and (though he can’t say in what capacity just yet) fighting on the Spike TV season finale card on June 21. Though he’s been portrayed as the lovable, self-deprecating underdog on the show, Sadollah now has his shot at a UFC career thanks to reality stardom.

In this exclusive interview, Sadollah talks to Cage Potato about being the man people want to fight, leaving his job to pursue his passion, and what he learned from his time on the show.

CagePotato.com: Thanks for taking the time to talk with me, Amir. What’s it like now to sit down and watch the show and see it all edited together? Does it seem accurate to you?

It’s kind of crazy. We were there and we lived it so on some level it’s familiar, but seeing it on TV just sort of reinforces for you that it really happened. It’s strange though, to see something you lived through on TV.

For the most part it’s pretty accurate. So much is left out just because they don’t have time to show it all, I guess. Obviously, they didn’t show anything that didn’t happen, but they definitely did show the things they wanted to in order to help them make people look a certain way. If they wanted to cast you a certain way, they made sure to show the stuff that helped them do that.

I’ve talked to some TUF contestants who said that a lot of the footage has been taken out of order. Stuff that happened in week six was shown in week one, that kind of thing. Is that true?

A lot of the stuff is out of order, and some things they purposely left out to make certain points. But I think everything they did was for a reason. At least I hope so. I don’t know, I’m not a TV editor or anything.

They’re really good at getting you to believe what they want you to believe as you’re watching it. It makes me think twice now whenever I watch another reality show. I know now that it isn’t necessarily really how things were, but how they made what happened into what they wanted it to be.

Can you give me an example of that?

Now you’re going to make me back up my statements? Aw, man. Well, okay, definitely in the confessionals is where they did a lot of the scripting of the show. Not that they told you what to say or anything, but they would ask these very leading questions, like, ‘do you think this guy is scared?’ And you don’t get to hear the questions when you watch the show, just the answers. It gives it a different feel when you think someone is just saying something, rather than answering a specific question.

Obviously, you saw previous season of the show before you went on it. What did you think about it then, and what made you decide that you wanted to be on the show?

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Written by admin on June 11th, 2008 with comments disabled.
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