May 14, 2008
The Ultimate Fighter has gotten into a new patter: two fights per episode. I wonder if the UFC and Dana White received less episodes from SpikeTV. Tonight's episode kicks off with Rampage Jackson finally having control of a fight announcement. He relishes the control. He chooses his own Gerald Harris versus Team Forrest's Amir Sadollah. We learn about Gerald first – he's pounds people. He's a rassler. He is great on the ground – Rampage thinks Gerald fights like he does. He calls him a Mini-Me. Amir is completely inexperienced. He's not too excited about going up a guy with a reputation for hurting people. Forrest says that if Amir wins, he'll shave his head.
May 14, 2008
UFC 84 is a mere 10 days away and just ahead of the May 24 scheduled bouts, veteran UFC fighter, Tito Ortiz, speaks out about his future.
Ortiz, who once sat loftily atop the UFC as Light Heavyweight champ for several years beginning in April 2000, when he won over Wanderlei Silva in UFC 25. He went on to successfully defend his title a total of five times in the span of three years. Come May 24, Ortiz, now considered a dinosaur in the league, will once again take to the ring, this time against the rising Lyoto Machida. It will be a fight for honor for the veteran, who will set out to prove to fans and most especially, Dana White of the UFC, exactly what he's still worth.
May 7, 2008
Matt Brown is a scary dude. He doesn't speak much, and when he does, the things he says are both bad ass and cryptic. He is a marketable UFC personality in this way. He is unable to train at half speed. He constantly goes all out, throwing full, hard punches at his teammates and coaches. His coach, Forest Griffin even gets perturbed by this, and I don't blame him. Just having Brown on your team leaves the door open for injury. He's had a checkered past, full of street fights, drugs, booze and jail. His opponent tonight was Jeremy May, the kind of guy who tries to make everyone in the house think he's drunk just to mess with them. Who would come out on top, the stoic or the joker? Tonight's The Ultimate Fighter also featured two fights, thanks to the quickness of each fight.
May 7, 2008
The UFC continues to trim its roster, appearing to make good on its plan to cut back by 25 percent. The Wrestling Observer reports that UFC lightweight hopeful Din Thomas, Shooto veteran Kuniyoshi Hironaka and The Ultimate Fighter 6 runner-up, Tommy Speer, are the latest to be dismissed from the UFC fold.
Meanwhile, another recently-released fighter has offered his personal thoughts on who he thinks could be up next on the chopping block.
April 30, 2008
The Ultimate Fighter is a predictable show. I'm not sure whether I like the fact that I can tell how many rounds the episode's fight is going to last or not. On one hand, there's no suspense. If the fight doesn't begin until the last ten minutes, then I can get excited for an early knockout. If the fight begins twenty minutes in, I know we're looking at a three-rounder. Tonight, on The Ultimate Fighter, we had an epic but boring three round bout, plus a quick cameo from a beloved UFC fighter.
April 23, 2008
The Ultimate Fighter has learned. They've found the flaws in previous seasons and have done what they can to correct them in subsequent ones. This time, for Team Rampage vs. Team Griffin, they have the makings of the best season yet. The first round of fights, whittling 32 fighters to 16, weeded out the unworthy fighters, the ones who were more interested in screen time than actually, you know, fighting. Tonight was a perfect example – the two guys who ended up fighting were all about getting into the Octagon and demolishing their opponent. It's safe to say that UFC president Dana White knows what he's doing.
April 16, 2008
Tonight's episode of The Ultimate Fighter was like the premiere episodes of any other season. Because of the new format from UFC president Dana White, where every fighter had to win an initial first round match to gain access to the Ultimate Fighter house, tonight's third episode saw the coaches pick their teams. We didn't get much of a read on why Rampage Jackson and Forest Griffin made the choices they made, but then again, we don't really know any of these fighter at this point. The first Round of 16 fight of the season was kind of a clunker, but that's to be expected out of the opening few fights.
April 10, 2008
If you saw the first episode of The Ultimate Fighter 7, then you know how the second episode is going to work. For the seventh season of SpikeTV's Mixed Martial Arts reality show, UFC President Dana White decided to shake things up. Instead of simply casting sixteen fighters and placing them in the Las Vegas house, White and company decided to make the contestants fight their way onto the show. The Ultimate Fighter began with 32 fighters and, over the course of the first two episode, we were treated to 16 separate fights. With coaches Rampage Jackson and Forrest Griffin watching with Dana White, last night's episode brought us the final eight fights of the preliminary rounds.