UFC 318’s Robert Valentin Shares Advice for TUF Contestant, ‘Lil Bro’ Daniil Donchenko

If you were watching the most recent season of the Ultimate Fighter, you likely saw a familiar face in the opening episode. As Daniil Donchenko got ready for his opening round right, footage played of him at Bangtao Muay Thai & MMA alongside of last season’s runner-up, Robert Valentin.

While he and Valentin are each other’s best training partners, the UFC middleweight explains that they are a lot closer than just training partners.

“We live together in Thailand, so we’ve know each other for a long time. I consider him my little brother. He’s been with me to a bunch of fights, cornering me. I’ve been with him to a bunch of fights, cornering him,” Valentin explained. “We spend our free time together. We go through thick and thin, and we learn from each other. He’s such a talented kid, such a great fighter.”

(SPOILER ALERT: First episode results below)

So naturally, when Donchenko got the call to go on the show, big brother stepped in to make sure that he had everything he needs. The first thing they handled was the physical demands of the show.

“Me coming back from the Ultimate Fighter and him going into it, I was like, hey, bro, look, this is how I did it,” he said. “So, I set him up with my nutritionist who programmed for me, like, every day of the Ultimate Fighter, how I need to do it to be on weight every time. Because you have to make weight back-to-back – that’s kind of a challenge, right?”

But as anyone who has watched the show knows, some of the biggest challenges on the Ultimate Fighter are not physical. Luckily for Donchenko, Valentin had him set on the mental side of things as well.

“I kind of prepared him also of how it will be feeling in there and what kind of mindset to keep. So I said it before, it’s either you’re a temple or you’re prison,” Valentin said. “So, go in with the right mindset and it will be your temple, and he did exactly that. In the first fight – great performance, good energy – so, I’m super excited to see the semi-finale.”

Physical side, mental side – some might think that’s all there is to the fight game and the Ultimate Fighter. However, Valentin revealed that neither of those pieces were the most important piece that he told his roommate. Instead, it was about sleeping arrangements.

“I told him, look, bro, you come into the house first and everybody will run upstairs because they think the nice rooms are upstairs,” he explained. “But actually, upstairs is shit because upstairs you will be in the same room with eight people. So, you run in, you take a left and take the last room on the floor on the right side, and you will have a nice bed and only one roommate and it will be the best room. And he did exactly that.”

You can continue to watch how Donchenko handles the advice of his teammate each week on the Ultimate Fighter. It airs on Tuesdays at 10pm EST on ESPN+. Meanwhile, you can catch Valentin on UFC 318, where he fights Ateba Gautier. That fight airs on the prelims which begins at 6pm EST this Saturday, also on ESPN+.