Despite boasting a perfect 10-0 MMA record, former Shark Fight Heavyweight champion Darrill Schoonover was surprisingly overlooked by many heading into The Ultimate Fighter: Heavyweights .
Instead of being portrayed as the legitimate threat that he is, the only camera time Schoonover received in earlier episodes was when rival coach and former UFC champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson openly mocked him for his physique.
In the beginning Schoonover brushed Jackson’s comments off but once the name-calling became more constant Schoonover eventually snapped.
In this exclusive interview Schoonover discusses his ongoing feud with Rampage as well as his desire to eventually fight the former Light-Heavyweight champion, his preliminary bout with Zak Jensen, and other TUF related topics.
Mitch Ciccarelli: Early in this week’s episode they showed clips of you drinking alcohol a lot in the house. The first scene saw you drinking a beer at 8 AM in the morning and your teammates seemed a bit worried that it would affect your performance in practice. Was it a situation where you were just drinking out of boredom because there isn’t much to do in the house or did you have somewhat of a drinking issue before coming onto the show?
Darrill Schoonover: That was huge editing because the first two days I was drinking and basically the first day we chose teams. After that they told us that we weren’t going to be doing anything the next day and that we were just going to be doing a lot of pictures and what not so I drank that night and morning because we had nothing to do.
Mitch Ciccarelli: So you weren’t drinking the morning before a training session?
Darrill Schoonover: They made it seem like I was and then the other guys were like ‘are you going to be able to make it to practice tomorrow’ and I’m like ‘yeah of course’, you know? After that I stopped drinking altogether and I waited until after my fight so I could drink on my birthday but that’s the only time I drank again [on the show]. But no I wasn’t drinking everyday right before practice or anything.
Mitch Ciccarelli: Well they definitely made you out to look like a drunk but hey at least you were portrayed as a happy drunk unlike other TUF veterans such as Chris Leben and Junie Browning.
Darrill Schoonover: Yeah they edited it really bad and that’s why I wrote my blog about that and hopefully I can get as many people to know the truth as possible. When I drink I’m usually happy and just joke around.
Mitch Ciccarelli: Rashad brought in GSP’s striking coach Phil Nurse for a special workout, what was it like working with such an accomplished coach such as Nurse and what type of techniques did you learn from him?
Darrill Schoonover: Phil Nurse is a really great [stand-up coach] and he was working with me a lot with the super-man punch from the right hand and the jab-hand. He was showing us a lot of other stuff to but some of it was a little too flashy for me because I’m not up there yet to where I can do some of that stuff but honestly I learned a lot [from Nurse]. We worked a lot on the mitts and the super-man punches and stuff like that.
Mitch Ciccarelli: They showed a clip of you in a sparring session with Brendan Schaub and the coaches seemed a bit worried because your conditioning looked a bit off. This is when James McSweeney brought it to their attention that you were a "drunk" and at this point the coaches decided to have what appeared to be some sort of a heart to heart lecture with you. What was going through your mind during this whole procedure and did you agree with them that your drinking was an issue?
Darrill Schoonover: In that sparring session that they showed with McSweeney calling me a “drunk” [that] was actually the very first week and you have to understand I fought within the third or fourth week into the show. They just edited the hell out of it but yeah when the coaches brought me in there they were like ‘some of the guys have been saying that you’ve been drinking and we just want you to slow down with it so it doesn’t affect your training’ and I just said ‘ok, sounds good’.
Mitch Ciccarelli: Some of the guys on Team Rashad seem a bit nosy, am I right?
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