T.U.F's Soszynski has no bad blood for Magalhaes

Having the tag of being one of the favorites going into the eighth season of The Ultimate Fighter, former IFL fighter Krzysztof Soszynski made his way to the semifinal round before being ousted by former Team Quest teammate Vinicius Magalhaes.

Rumors began to surface after the taping of the show that Soszynski and Magalhaes were at odds during the season and afterwards, but according to Krzysztof, he's not sure where that all started.

"To be honest with you, I didn't know about any bad blood between me and Vinny until I started reading his blogs and started listening to some of the interviews he was saying. I've never had anything bad to say about Vinny," Soszynski told MMAWeekly.com on Thursday.

"Vinny and I got along great before we got into the house; we got along great in the house. Even before the fight, we had lunch together the day before just by ourselves and we even drove in the same van to our fight together. So it was weird to start reading some of the comments that Vinny had made about me and my skills and me, myself personally, and all this stuff."

Soszynski explains that the tension may stem from Magalhaes departure from Team Quest after the show finished filming.

"I think because of what happened when Vinny came back with Team Quest, Team Quest and Vinny had it out a little bit, and obviously Vinny left and went elsewhere," Soszynski commented. "I think that could be part of it. Maybe everybody thought that I was going to beat Vinny and Vinny got kicked off the team for losing or something like that, I don't know. I read about that too.

"There's a whole bunch of rumors out there, but me personally, Vinny and I were great. I'm actually pulling for him in the finals. I don't care what he says in his blogs or his interviews. He was a great teammate. I liked him a lot, but I'm pulling for him in the finals."

Back to the fight in the semifinals, Soszynski talked about the familiarity he felt with Vinny going into the fight and how that played into both of their respective gameplans.

"I knew exactly what he was going to do; he knew exactly what I was going to do," Soszynski explained. "When we sparred at Team Quest, it's very simple -- Vinny's a fighter that goes backwards, tries not to take a lot of punishment, doesn't throw very much. When he sees his opening he shoots, takes you down, works his jiu-jitsu. And I knew that was the gameplan for him, and my gameplan would be to try and keep it standing."

Ultimately, what Magalhaes was able to do was get the fight to the ground with something his former teammate had not seen from him in the past and shortly thereafter a submission came down the pipe.

"The one thing that caught me off guard to be honest was his pulling guard," Soszynski said. "I wasn't expecting Vinny to pull guard because he's never done it with me before, ever. He's only ever shot on me, very low singles, very low doubles, or just shot for a double and try to walk right through the takedown. So when he pulled guard, I was like, 'whoa, how the hell did I get here?'

"When we clinched together I had both underhooks, so when he pulled guard he had both my hands trapped and immediately I felt his hips spinning around right away and I just didn't have time to react."

Regardless of the loss, Soszynski was happy he did the reality show and looks forward to his next chance in the Octagon against Shane Primm on Dec. 13.

"Me personally, I had a great experience," he commented. "It's definitely done a lot of good things for me and my career. It was a great decision for me to actually send a video and do the interview and meet the people that need to be met to get into the house because at first I wasn't actually thinking about applying at all.

"Overall, the house was great; I had a good time. A lot of boredom, a lot of downtime, but great training and met a lot of great people and great fighters."