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So, is anybody else watching this anymore? The people of my daily acquaintance who generally keep up with the world of MMA seem to have lost interest in this season of The Ultimate Fighter (they are all like “uh, missed it, I guess”) but apparently it’s not just them; it’s all kinds. MMA Payout recently posted this ratings analysis of the seven TUF seasons through seven episodes. And despite Dana White’s insistence earlier this year that “The ratings for the Ultimate Fighter have been fucking awesome,” they’ve been steadily declining each seasons since the third, with season seven being the worst of the lot.

Which is too bad, because this is actually pretty good. Remember last week when Amir “pulled off a stunning comeback” against Gerald Harris? Remember just last week when Patrick lost to Cale and talked back to Forrest? And Rampage got all worked up? With the promise that next week (that is to say this week) he would get even more worked up? I’m in! Are you?

PRESUMABLY!

This week it’s CB and Nick in the last fight of the first round, but first a recap of last week’s Patrick/Cale bout. Rampage was very pleased with Patrick’s performance in the fist round, as was Dana. They would give him the round. Round two, Cale hit him with the “junior varsity high school football tackle,” as Forrest has it, and completely dominated, taking the round 10-8 and so the match. Rampage began yelling about how his fight with Forrest wasn’t going to go to a decision, and that he’d bet his whole purse on it. Forrest, who seemed irked but pretty collected in the face of this harsh diss while still in the cage with his team, absolutely lost his shit in the dressing room, taking out a door in the style of (depending on who you ask) Chris Leben, Donkey Kong, a gorilla, or a karate practitioner of some kind. By his own admission, Forrest had “temper tantrum there, a little man period,” and when Dana White comes into the room Forrest is bobbing around shadow boxing in front of this, yeah, Donkey Kong’d door. Patrick, to his credit, comes into the room and apologizes for speaking out of turn to Forrest. Perhaps I have judged this man too harshly on the grounds of his truly douchie hair?

Nick, who is set to face the feared CB, feels that he is the weakest link on his team. His stand up is not great, and his jujitsu is average. He says he doesn’t like confrontation. He seems, in short, shook. Matt Brown suggests Nick needs to get his mind right, and it is hard to disagree.

A net gun! A scheme to ensnare Jackson in this net! Oh man! How is this going to play out? For the first and I am going to guess only time it will ever happen, Forrest traps Rampage against the side of the cage. “He done went too far; he netted me,” is Rampage’s take. Well, part of it: further, he feels that Forrest’s “chicken-faced assistant coach” is the one who needs to get netted, in that he should be netted and sit on some eggs because “he’s ugly as hell.” What’s more, Rampage thinks that it is clear that he is neither a fish nor a wild animal escaped from the zoo, and so this netting is inappropriate on any number of grounds. Jackson jokes (?) that as a black man from the south he half expected a noose. Aaaaaaand that’s kind of uncomfortable.

CB reminds us that the big bad wolf was boiled when he tried to come down the chimney. Never forget that. CB Dollaway has only a year of MMA training, but he was an All-American at Arizona State. Also, he speaks in the third-person, at least when talking about the dark days of his first desk job out of college: “Decided that wasn’t what CB wants right now.” Jackson thinks CB has the most talent in the house, but that he is uncommonly full of himself. He’s “got a big-ass head.” He also has kind of a big ass-head, too. In training, CB threw a little kick in Jackson’s direction after Jackson taunted him for getting caught in a kneebar, and Jackson, seemingly a little pissed, took his damn socks off and rolled with him only to be caught in what they’re calling a Peruvian necktie. All kidding aside, Rampage says that he got caught, and that CB “kicked [his] ass, he’s pretty good.”

Nick Klein is a farm boy. Farm boy strength is totally a thing that is to be taken seriously. We come up soft in the city. We have no sense of what to bale or how to bale it (initially I spelled it “bail” because I am a coastal man). Nick Klein though is a man who knows. We don’t get much on him or what skills he brings, exactly. CB is Jackson’s ace, and Nick is, from what we’re shown and told, a nice guy, but not much. Nick’s teammates talk to him about the kind of pressure CB is under to perform here, while Nick is under none. That is real.

To the fight itself: Mazzagatti (death), Burger King with the ca$h incentives as per usual. Round one opens with Nick catching a kick and coming in for a takedown. CB grabs a guillotine, works himself out from underneath, takes the back, Nick looks to roll for a kneebar while CB punches the back of the head. Nick comes reasonably close with a kneebar but CB again takes the back and punches the back o the head. Forrest is trying to get Nick to stand, but the best he manages is to roll to guard and throw up a couple of fairly desperate armbar and triangle attempts. He’s once again gives up his back. Rolls back to half guard, then to guard, and he’s throwing up the armbar attempts, but they’re nowhere near. CB is a slick as hell on top, moving to half guard and then side control. Nick is game but CB is just outclassing him here. Nick gets his guard back and tries what we would call a kannuki gatame or “bolt lock” in judo (the Frank Mir armlock) but CB slips out. Nick manages a sort of half sweep that forces CB to his side, but before you know it CB has is back on top. With fifteen seconds to go Nick has his best jujigatame attempt of the round, but CB is never in any real danger from it. A round that you’ve got to give to CB, absolutely no doubt about it, but Nick comes out of that round looking like a gamer. Good for him.

Round two and both fighters start out trading. Sort of: Forrest tells Nick to throw hard, but he’s kind of just pitter patting. Nick jumps guard and starts and throws up some fairly half-hearted sub attempts. CB is not doing a ton of damage, it must be said, and Nick, to his credit, is fairly active on the bottom, but this looks to be headed to a CB decision for sure. Or not, actually: CB finishes with a guillotine to end this really nice fight. An excellent showing by both fighters, actually. I really liked this. Rampage says that CB stands for “Cick Butt.” Maybe!

So, what next, after that solid technical bout? Cale’s thoughts on “the gays”: “Look at the douche bags with the same glasses. The gays, they look like the gays. Look at the two boyfriends with their glasses on. They look like boyfriends.” A rare wit, this Cale.

A man of his word, Forrest has his hair styled by Amir as a reward for winning his fight. It’s . . . it’s not actually that bad. The little speed lines down the left side are kind of dope, actually. And Rampage shoots him with a water gun! Oh man! That water gun is huge!

For the quarterfinals, then, what we’ve got is Jesse vs. Dante, Matt vs. Amir, Dan vs. Tim, CB vs. Cale, the first two of which will be seen by the dwindling TUF audience NEXT WEEK.