The next time you're dining out and are tempted to complain about your food, make sure you do it politely.

You never know when you might be griping at a mixed martial arts fighter.

If you're in Tulsa, Okla., be very careful. "The Ultimate Fighter 11" cast member Josh Bryant (10-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC) just might be on the other side of the table staring back at you.

Born and raised in Oklahoma, the 29-year-old never had aspirations to be a professional cagefighter. Sure, he watched the UFC, but despite a moderately successful high school wrestling career, Bryant hadn't much considered a potential future as a mixed martial artist.

That quickly changed.

"I was a wrestler lifting weights in gyms, and some guys were like, 'Hey, man, you wrestle; you should go work out with these guys,'" Bryant told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). "I just fell into the sport.""

"I watched all of the UFC events. But at one point, you're the guy sitting on the couch going, 'Man, that stuff is cool.' Then the next minute, you're in the cage going, 'Man, this stuff is awesome. I can do it. I'm decent at it.'"

"Those guys" that Bryant first started training with were the crew at UFC veteran Mikey Burnett's gym, which eventually branched off into Tulsa Combat Fitness. Bryant took his first pro fight in April 2007 and won in just 45 seconds. It was an impressive performance, but he knew there was still a long way to go to reaching the sport's top level.

"I was a wrestler, and I could get you on the ground and punch hard," Bryant said. "So I started working with (UFC veteran) David Heath, and I started developing my standup game. I think I'm pretty good at it now. I'll punch you, and if I see an opening, I'll take you down.

"I just go out there and try and win. I like to, of course, put on a show, but in the process, I'm not going to say, 'Oh, they don't like it because I took him down and I'm pounding his face in. They want me to stand up.' That's not in my head at all. I see an opening, I take it."

Bryant also quickly developed his submission skills, and four of his first five victories came by tapout – even if one of them was due to punches.

"I've got a decent sub game," Bryant said. "We've got some good guys in Tulsa. We have a lot of smaller gyms all around us, and we cross-train with Renato Tavares' gym. He's a legit black belt. So we get some jits from those guys, and we have some good jits guys ourself.

"We're like the new breed, the new age. We try to put it all together before we get into the UFC. We try to work on everything. We have boxing classes, kickboxing classes, subs, wrestling, everything. We try to do it all."

So with a perfect 10-0 record to open his career, Bryant decided on a whim to try out for "The Ultimate Fighter 11."

"I hadn't tried out before, but I kind of wanted to," Bryant said. "My buddy says, 'Hey, man, they're going to have tryouts in L.A. You should fly out.' I was like, 'Hell yeah, man. Let's do it.' So I got together with a couple of guys, and they kind of sponsored me and threw me on a plane, and I was there."

Of course, the season ended up featuring 28 middleweights. Bryant was competing at light heavyweight at the time.

"I've got to be honest, I felt really good while I was at the tryouts," Bryant said. "The only thing was that I tried out for 205 pounds because all of my fights are at 205. I'm a short 205er, but I tried out for 205, and I get all the way to the end of the tryout, and there's like a bunch of us 205ers sitting around because they did 185 pounds first. Then they called us all in at the same time, and I'm like, 'Dude, this is bad news.'

"We get in there, and they're like, 'Hey, we're cutting 205.' I was the first mother[expletive] to say, 'Hey, I can make 185. I'm a little pudgy, I'm a little short. I'll make 185.' They said they'd give me a shot."

Bryant took advantage of that shot with a majority decision win over Greg Rebello in the season's preliminary round to earn his way into the house. The fight didn't get much Spike TV airtime on Wednesday night because of several highlight-reel finishes in the 13 other first-round fights.

Bryant was also impressed by the level of the other athletes that made it into the 11th season of "The Ultimate Fighter."

"There's a lot of good guys this season," Bryant said. "For real - they didn't just go for the guys that were the goofy guys – you know, some guys on the season that you're like, 'What are they doing there? They don't belong.' There's some good guys here, so it's going to be a tough season.

"These guys are all good. They've all proven that they deserve to be hear by fighting to get in the house. I'm just going to take it one fight at a time and try to win them all. That's the goal."

So with a wife and kids at home (well, dogs, actually, but "They're like our kids. They're just mutts, but they're mine."), Bryant now puts the life of a restaurant manager on hold to chase a new dream, one that he found almost by accident.

It's not exactly a "do-or-die" situation, but Bryant isn't tempering his goals on the show.

"I kind of took a leave-type-of-thing," Bryant said. "They were like, 'Hey, we really like you. We want you to come back.' So, as of right now, I'm still going to be the restaurant manager, but we'll see how this pans out."