TUF 5 - Finale

Well, I didn't bother to recap the two semi-final episodes. Take the pain. Here's the quickie version. Karo and Nate Diaz almost came to blows. Manny beat Joe. The fighters trashed the house. Nate beat Gray. All Team Pulver in the finals. People hugged.

Last night was the finale, which featured Nate Diaz v Manny Gamburyan. The promos for the show took full advantage of both Diaz' and Gamburyan's family, selling the clash as a meeting of "UFC royalty." A tad hyperbolic perhaps, but a good way of selling the card. And of course, the show also features the long-awaited clash between Jens Pulver and BJ Penn.

Because the show mainly featured matches, and not in-house shenanigans, I've decided to break down the matches into my Good, Bad and Ugly classifications. Primarily for the sake of consistency.

The Good

• BJ Penn d Jens Pulver - BJ looked to be in the best condition he's ever seen, and was more than ready for Jens. But Jens was able to last a round and a half with BJ, before finally submitting to a rear naked choke.
  After the match, BJ and Jens hugged, and it seems that the 'bad blood' between the two of them has been cleared up. Which is good, given that the whole thing seemed to be more of a friendly rivalry than a feud. Plus, with Jens apparently dropping down to 145 in the WEC (watch out Urijah Faber) and BJ looking to go back up to 170 to avenge his loss to Matt Hughes, there isn't any point to these two 'feuding' any longer.
  And speaking of BJ/Hughes 3, I'm totally favouring BJ. He lost the last fight because of poor conditioning, and if the well-conditioned BJ from last night shows up, Hughes is in trouble. Which is fine with me.


• Roger Huerta d Doug Evans - Huerta is the UFC's cover boy, quite literally, as he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated's first issue to address the growing popularity of the UFC and MMA. He's young, he's attractive, and he's Latino. Which is important if the UFC wants to tap into the Latino market. Particularly when their other prominent Latino fighter, Diego 'Dirty' Sanchez has all the charm and appeal of a scorching case of herpes.
  So it's understandable that the UFC would want Huerta to win. But this fight wasn't a cakewalk. Evans put on a good performance, most likely winning the first round. But in the second round, Huerta came out more aggressive. Even then, Evans took down Huerta twice, before Huerta was able to get Evans' back, and rained down punches until the ref stopped it.
  Evans may have lost, but he established himself as a strong fighter in the growing lightweight division. And Huerta solidified his position both in the division, and in the UFC.
  
• Thalas Leites d Floyd Sword - Leites put on something of a jiu-jitsu clinic here, tossing Sword around before getting an arm triangle in the second half of the first round.


• Joe Lauzon d Brandon Melendez - Joe was a TUF favorite until he ran into Manvil, and Brandon was fairly impressive. Brandon also didn't make weight, coming in at 157, but Lauzon still agreed to the match. Plus Joe gets a cut of Brandon's purse as a penalty.
  The first round was very good, with Joe going all out, and Brandon showing good submission defense and striking when the fight was standing. The first round ended with Joe trapping Brandon with a heel hook that, with another thirty seconds, would probably have meant victory. The second round continued with more of the same. Brandon showed great submission defense, just not enough to counter Joe's relentless attack. Joe finally got Brandon with a triangle choke as Brandon was transitioning out of giving up his back to Joe.
  Joe showed that his defeat of Jens wasn't a fluke, and his loss to Manny wasn't a stumbling block. And Brandon still has a future in the octagon, or another MMA organization, possibly a team based league.

The Bad

• Cole Miller d Andy Wang - Okay, during the season, Andy got in trouble for choosing to stand and trade punches, rather than take the fight to the ground and utilize his Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt! So what does he do when he's given a chance on the TUF Finale? He stands and trades punches with Cole of course!
  Cole looked pretty good here, but not overly impressive, knocking Wang down with a high kick to the head, and finishing him with punches, although Wang argued that the fight was ended too soon. Cole will be pretty good in a few years, but he isn't at the same level of Diaz, Lauzon and Gamburyan.
  Wang? Wang needs to rethink his fighting philosophy. Like I said while rewatching Wang's fight during the Spike TV TUF marathon, if I'm Wang's corner man, I'm telling him that if he doesn't shoot for a take down in the first thirty seconds, I'm throwing in the towel. And then I follow through on that threat. Wang needs to be taught to fight to his strengths.
  
• Nicknames - I've talked about this before, but now it's just getting ridiculous. Last night Joe Lauzon's nickname was J-Lo. Which I guess is funny, and maybe Joe chose it as a joke, but still, why would one want to be associated with that? And Brandon Melendez' nickname? The Murderer! What's next, The Rapist? The Pederast? The 911 Terrorist?
  Nicknames are all well and good, but only when they're earned, original and somewhat entertaining. Don't just take a nickname because you like the sound of the word. Otherwise you'll get names like Chilly McFreeze or the Shockmaster.

The Ugly

• Gray Maynard NC Rob Emerson - Before the fight, this one was similar to Pete Sell v Scott Smith from the TUF4 Finale. Two guys, both friends, looking to beat on the other guy for 15 minutes, then go out for a protein shake afterwards.
  After the fight, this one was similar to Pete Sell v Scott Smith from the TUF4 finale, with the most bizarre finish on the show. The first round saw Maynard dominate Emerson with wrestling, but Emerson scored some good punches. At one point, Maynard really damaged Emerson with a strong blow to the ribs, made all the worse by the fact that Emerson evidently tore some cartilage on his ribs during training.
  In the second round, Maynard took Emerson down, and the force of impact caused Emerson to tap. But the force also knocked Gray out, as he essentially DDT'ed himself on the mat. Gray thought he won, but it was announced as a no-contest. Gray was livid, while Emerson positioned everything for a rematch.
  Not a bad fight, as both guys looked good (although Gray looked better), but the ending was a mess. And Gray's refusal to accept the decision made him look pretty bad. I can understand arguing, but he was almost petulant.
  
• Nate Diaz b Manny Gamburyan - In the first round, Manny showed why being 155 lbs of muscle on a 5'5" frame can be a good thing, as he overpowered Diaz. Diaz tried for some submission attempts, but as Rogan and Goldberg pointed out, Manny's smaller limbs make it easier for him to escape potential submissions. Diaz was being overpowered, but he didn't lose his cool, and kept focused on the match. More importantly, Diaz let Manny wear himself out in the first round.
  When the second round started, Manny seemed ready to go, albeit a little winded, while Diaz seemed fresh. Manny shot in, and took Nate down, then started tapping. Manvil suffered another shoulder problem, which is what kept him out for two years before he got on the show, and he evidently aggravated in his victory over Lauzon.
  Again, this was by no means a bad fight, but the ending was ugly, made all the worse by the repeats of Manvil's shoulder injury. Obviously Nate will take the victory, but he didn't beat Manny. What is worse is the possibility that Manny may not fight again, given the continuing problems he seems to have with that shoulder. Should Manny be able to return, a rematch is more than in order. Maybe an Ultimate Fight Night with Manny v Diaz and Gray v Emerson?
  
• BJ Penn's Post-fight Interview - or lack thereof. Jens gave a good interview, commending BJ, talking about his plans to train with BJ, and move down to 145, and how he learned from the show. When Joe went to talk to BJ, BJ said to go to BJPenn.com, then ran from the ring like George W. Bush from a grieving war mother. When I went to the site later, it was down, giving an Internal Server error, which could have been a commentary on BJ's feelings, but was probably the result of too much traffic. As of my writing this, the site still wasn't working properly. I don't know why BJ decided not to do an interview, but it made him come across as bitter and childish. But I still like him better than Matt Hughes.

TUF5, despite the fact that it greatly disillusioned me on Dana White and the UFC, was still a very good season. Interesting characters, good fights, and some not too childish antics made for a good show. Hopefully TUF6 will continue that theme, although I'm not looking forward to having to watch Matt Hughes on my tv. Unless it's footage of him getting his ass handed to him by GSP over and over again.

TUF 5.10

Okay, so I'm quite late in posting this. But I just started two new jobs, so I'm working oddly right now.

The show opens with Corey Hill in the sauna, talking about the fight with Buddy Rowe. What's that? You don't know who Buddy Rowe is? Why he's Corey Hill's motivational inner voice. This once again demonstrates Corey's rather unique personality and approach to the sport.

The most dramatic portion of this week's episode was Nate Diaz working out with Team Penn, as a result of his desire to spend less time around Corey Hill, given that he was preparing to fight Hill. Some of Diaz's Team Pulver teammates are less than enthused about this, a sentiment shared by some members of Team Penn. Notable amongst Team Penn members is Joe Lauzon, who has advanced to the semi-finals, and has a couple of nagging injuries that he doesn't exactly want to advertise.

Nate stays at the gym to work out with Team Pulver, and has a little tete a tete with Jens about why he was working out with Team Penn. Jens tries to understand Nate's reasoning, but doesn't quite get it. But he also doesn't get upset with Nate, and supports the decision regardless.

Jens also tells us that he's not cornering for either Nate or Corey. Good on him.

Corey and Nate have a very good fight. Just comparing Corey's performance in his first fight to this one, you can see just how much Corey has improved. Nate wins with a triangle choke after a few minutes of both stand up and ground work. More importantly, the end of the fight is followed by hugs and mutual admiration.

We then move on to the next fight of the episode, Matt Wiman vs. Manny Gamburyan. In order to better prepare Manny for the fight, Jens brings in Manny's cousin, Karo Parisyan. You know, the guy who throws opponents around like sacks of flour? Yeah, him. Parisyan gives all Team Pulver members a crash course in throwing.

Nobody except Karo and Manny seem to be giving Manny a chance. Dana favours Matt, BJ favours Matt, and Matt believes that God favours Matt. I think Matt Hughes and Tim Sylvia made similar contentions. And of course, we can never forget God's teaming with Shawn Michaels in a tag team loss to Vince McMahon and Shane McMahon.

In the fight, Manny outpowers Matt's attempts to take him down, and does more damage striking. In an upset, Manny scores a unanimous decision over Matt.

Matt shows his Christian side when he dismisses Manny's victory as a fluke, stating that "I still believe that I’m a much better fighter than he is… if I fought that guy ten times, I would beat him more times than he would beat me… It doesn’t make sense, him beating me." Classy guy that Matt Wiman.

The Good

• Both fights were very good this week.
• Corey Hill is a markedly improved fighter. If he improved this much in the six weeks or so he was in the house, he is going to be a real force to be reckoned with after six months.
• Once again, Jens shows his reasonable and motivating side. While he may not have really understood why Nate wanted to train with Team Penn, he didn't freak out and go off. Instead, he listened to what Nate had to say, and did his best to ensure that Nate got what he thought was the best training possible. Hmmm, coaching without belittling, abusing, berating or attacking. What a crazy concept.
• I'm impressed with Karo's willingness to come in and help all members of Team Pulver. While Manny may have been the reason he came, he didn't only help Manny. It's also impressive because Karo doesn't get the respect from the UFC that other guest coaches like Randy Couture and Matt Hughes have received.
• After the kafuffle last week about Noah Thomas and Marlon Sims facing one another at the TUF5 finale next week, Dana sent down word from on high that not only is that fight not taking place, but also that "will never fight in the UFC - ever." Dana said that Spike announced the fight because they wanted it, but Dana never agreed, and he has no intention of allowing them in the UFC after the street fight. Good for Dana.

The Bad

• I don't think Nate ever just said "I wanted to train with BJ because I don't feel comfortable training here with Corey."

The Ugly

• Matt Wiman needs to learn to keep his mouth shut. If you're going to drop the God card before the fight, you'd better be prepared to keep it in play after the fight. Otherwise, you just come across as a hypocritical jackass. Unless, of course, you actually are a hypocritical jackass.

Next week, we get the announcement of the semi-final matches. It seems that Dana wants to see Nate v Manny and Joe v Gray, but Jens isn't too keen on the idea.

TUF 5.9 - Killing Time

This week's episode begins with a recap of last week's fight. The official one, not the one between Noah and Marlon, which goes unmentioned this week. This week's fight is Gray Maynard versus Brandon Melendez.

We then go to a Team Pulver training session, where Jens is growing frustrated with Melendez's attitude, and Melendez is growing weary of Jens. Jens tries to talk to Brandon, but Brandon doesn't really seem to be listening. Everything comes to a head when Brandon insists he wants to ride the Airedyne after practice, but Jens wants him to do some stretching instead. Brandon really likes the Airedyne. It's his happy place.

At Camp Penn, Gray and BJ are sparring, and we get Gray's description of how BJ could have stepped it up at any time and taken Gray out. The sparring session gets pretty intense, but shockingly neither man snaps and loses it, and instead they just keep pushing one another to try harder. You know, kind of like a sparring session is supposed to work.

Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Pulver, Brandon asks for a chat session with the coaches. He tells them a bunch of stuff about wanting to get the most from his TUF experience, and how he wants to do some training with BJ, just so he can say he trained with both Jens and BJ. Jens tries to explain the whole 'team' concept to Brandon, telling him that 'nobody walks off and nobody gets kicked off'. Realizing that Jens isn't going to Wang him, Brandon acquiesces and everybody hugs and stuff to end the drama.

At Team Penn's session, BJ introduces a special trainer, Randy Couture. Most excited is Gray, who trains with Randy anyway, and is now getting a visit from his mentor. As Matt Wiman describes it, "Gray’s wagging his tail, bouncing around...Who wouldn’t be?" Randy gives the remaining four members of Team Penn some grappling tips. Hmmm, four is less than eight, which means these four guys get more time with one of the greatest fighters in UFC history than they would have if Dana hadn't kicked out three guys and BJ hadn't bullied another out in an attempt to compensate for his feelings of emasculation.

We also get more of a preview for Penn v Pulver II. BJ seems to think that Jens has been disrespecting him behind his back since BJ's defeat at the hands of Pulver. Jens feels that he was disregarded before the first fight, which motivated him then, and being similarly disregarded is motivating him now.

It is now time for our weekly installment of wacky house antics. This time the excitement involves Cole and Nate. The antics evidently began with Nate bugging Cole while he slept, which led to Cole covering Nate's bed in silly string and pinatas (?), which led to Nate and Cole wrestling and fighting with silly string. Everything appears to be finished when Cole and Nate throw each other's mattresses in the pool and a truce is called.

But Nate isn't satisfied. He waits till Cole is asleep, and sneaks in, douses Cole in cold water, then has Manny 'antique' Cole with baby powder. Standing there, wet and white, Cole realizes he is a beaten man.

We now get to watch Melendez trying to cut weight. Most impressive of this whole thing was the way that Andy Wang stayed with Brandon, keeping him motivated and just giving Brandon some company. After the less than stellar way Andy came off after his loss, and subsequent expulsion by BJ, this episode really redeemed Andy as a good person and teammate.

The fight begins around 20 minutes to the hour, so we can be fairly sure the fight is going two rounds.

After some striking, Gray takes Brandon down, but Brandon not only avoids being dominated, manages to try for some submissions, and gets to his feet. Gray keeps taking Brandon to the mat, but Brandon proves to be a better wrestler than anticipated, and Gray has trouble keeping Brandon on the ground.

The second round starts with both guys trading punches in the middle of the ring, with Brandon getting the better, causing Gray to return to grappling. Again, despite taking Brandon down with relative ease, Gray can't do anything, and Brandon gets in his own submission attempts before getting to his feet.

Finally Gray takes Brandon down and gets him in a guillotine. Brandon taps with just under a minute left in the round. A good fight, and either Brandon is much better than he was given credit for, or Gray isn't the wrestling machine he was being touted as. Or some combination of the two.

The Good

• Once again, Jens comes across as a reasonable, intelligent, sympathetic person.
• Randy's appearance was very good, and he not only gave BJ's only four teammates some good advice, he was even helping BJ out.
• Andy Wang may not be a warrior, but he's a mensch.
• Cole and Nate's antics are an example of rough-housing done right. No bones were broken, nobody was bloodied, and all parties were laughing at the end.

The Bad

• At the beginning of the episode, during the recap, one of the fighters said that Cole "was a man, and went out and took his beating." What one has to do with the other is unclear.
• I really think the fact that BJ is such a piss poor coach that four of his fighters are no longer with his team is giving the guys he has left an unfair advantage. BJ gets to spend more time with the remaining fighters individually than Jens. But then again, Dana seems to want one of BJ's fighters to win, and isn't shy about manipulating the show to help make that happen.
• I'm not sure why Cole chose pinatas as the totems to send a message to Nate, but without context, it seems awfully racist.
• While the Cole/Nate antics seemed to be all in good fun, Nate's interviews suggest that he wanted to actually fight. Did he not see what happened the week before?

The Ugly

• Or did Nate see all too well what happened to the two guys who got kicked out for fighting the week before? They got to go home, see their families, watch some tv, read a newspaper, and do what normal people do. And then they got a fight on the TUF5 finale. That's right, the first matchup for the TUF5 finale undercard has been announced, and it's Marlon Sims v Noah Thomas. AKA, the fight they both wanted, and their motivation for starting that backyard fiasco. So last week, their antics so thoroughly disgusted Dana, and were seen as a slap in the face to those who have sought to bring legitimacy to MMA in North America. But now, those antics are seen as a reason to give these guys a fight on national TV, a UFC payday, and a shot at making it in the UFC. Which is it? Are these guys a disgrace, or are they UFC calibre fighters? Or are UFC calibre fighters a disgrace?

Next week, we get the two remaining fights. Manny Gamburyan v Matt Wiman, which I believe is an upset waiting to happen. And Corey Hill v Nate Diaz, which guarantees a Team Pulver fighter in the semifinals. Except Nate seems to turn his back on Team Pulver in an attempt to train away from his opponent. DRAMA!!