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It’s going to be tough for this week’s episode to top, or even match, last week’s heady mix of go-karts and juvenile race baiting. Maybe they won’t even try? Like when after Slayer knew they couldn’t get any faster than the Reign in Blood album, they decided to go another way? “We knew we couldn’t top Reign in Blood,” guitarist Jeff Hanneman has said, “so we had to slow down. We knew whatever we did was gonna be compared to that album, and I remember we actually discussed slowing down. It was weird—we’ve never done that on an album, before or since.” And, so, South of Heaven. Aside from just being enormously wise, this is all extremely relevant, I think, due to Slayer’s inclusion on the very stupidly titled Ultimate Fighting Championship: Ultimate Beatdowns, Volume 1 CD released in 2004 which I have never heard, but which I used to see regularly in the used bins in Toronto’s Sonic Boom Records (formerly and, in fact, forever Cheapo Records in my heart). Bathurst and Bloor! Honest Ed’s! KoreaTown! XO Karaoke Box!

Ultimate Fighter semi-finals!

We are reminded that the John McCarthyesque Jesse Taylor has earned his berth in the semi-finals with his decision win over Dante Rivera, and that Tim Credeur overcame the good looks of Dan Cramer (upon whom Tim seems perhaps not unduly fixated) with a slick heel hook in an otherwise shaky first round. This week they meet.

Dana White is of the opinion that the best guys are in the semifinals, which is on the one hand definitional, but on the other hand, a thing. Tim and Jesse are probably going to be lifelong buddies! That’s pretty nice. The way-more-handsome-than-Dan-Cramer Cameron will corner Tim, and Forrest will corner Jesse.

The coach’s challenge is usually genuinely entertaining, and this season we’ve got Forrest against Jackson in a basketball challenge. A game of horse! Forrest hasn’t played since high school; Rampage is apparently just plain awful. The stakes: $10 000 for the winning coach, $1 000 for each member of the winning coach’s team. This is some pretty damn high stakes horse. Dana White says he will double the fighters’ money if Jackson makes a three-pointer, and, somewhat miraculously, he does, to much elation.

And then Forrest starts knocking them down.

Jesse babbles about something. About being “J. T. Money” or something. Actually he just rambles aimlessly in the mode of Miss Teen South Carolina for some time. Jesse is a solid young fighter and he seems like a genuinely nice guy, so I don’t say this with a bone to pick in the least, but wow Jesse is just a straight up dumb person. I don’t know if a line of work that exposes him to blunt trauma to the head is the answer, but I sincerely wish him well. Ah, I see: he was having “a money sign” shaved into his head. His teammates insist it looks like balls, but I can’t say for sure.

Drinks lead to property damage. This is the least surprising of things.

Oh, and Jesse pisses himself.

Also, what is with the blackface paintings around the house bar? Those are, uh, a little edgy.

Jesse and Tim train with each other right up until the day of the fight, which, I guess at this point, they might as well. They no doubt know each other’s games well enough at this point after five or six weeks of training that it’s immaterial whether they train together in the final days or not. I can see this.

Let’s get to know these guys a little, then. Jesse tells us about his beloved three year-old son. “I could write actually a series of poems about my kid. Nah, not really. All jokes aside, I really miss my kid.” That was a joke? We learn about Tim’s wife’s support for his ten-year, no-money career, for which he is extremely grateful. Two decent dudes, as presented here. The young and powerful and slightly dim Jesse against the experienced and wily and bright Tim, the wrestler against the jujitsu man.

Burger King, as you have come to expect, is all up in this three round fight. Your referee is the competent yet creepy Josh Rosenthal. Round one opens with a pretty much uncontested takedown by Jesse. Tim controls Jesse’s posture and spins off the cage. I believe it’s Cameron’s voice (*swoon*) we hear coaching Tim, and he’s giving what is, to my ear, really solid technical advice. Tim is working from a closed guard too much to be much of a threat on the bottom, but at the halfway point he opens up and comes reasonably close on an armbar and then has thoughts of a triangle before Jesse works his way out of trouble. Jesse starts to land some solid blows, big lefts, a nice elbow, the odd hammer fist. Cameron insists that Tim needs to open the guard, overhook the arm, and get the butterfly. That is my bread and butter sweep and so I support this tactic. “Use the overhook for omoplata!” Oh man I like to do that too! I just think Cameron and I should hang, is all, you know? Jesse takes that round easily.

Round two: Jesse with a single, rather than the double, a scramble, but the same result — Jesse working away inside Tim’s guard. Jesse is big and strong and clearly has a good base, but you’d really think (by which I guess I mean “I really thought”) Tim would look better from the bottom than he does here. Well, OK, Tim starts fishing for legs, and things improve. A scramble, and Tim is on top, mounted. Jesse gives up his back, but Tim works back to mount. Oh man sloppy as hell: Cameron rightly says that Jesse is going to give up his back, and that Tim, who has Jesse’s arm, needs to “keep it, keep it.” Jesse rolls, and Tim just slips off in the worst way, letting the arm just slide through, and Cameron is distraught: “Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiim . . . .” With a minute to go, Jesse is back on top and landing. Cameron wants to see an omoplata on the left side. So do I. But Tim is just covering up rather than trying to control the wrist. He’s in rough shape as the round ends. He had his chances here, but he’s pretty clearly down two rounds here.

Round three: oh man, Cameron, seriously. That guy. Seriously. Just look at him breaking it down all sagely in the corner. Jesse gets the takedown once again, and has Tim up against the cage. Tim works his way out with a butterfly sweep that doesn’t work cleanly but which gets him into a scramble, he takes the back, but again he just slides off in the most amatuerish way looking for the armbar (as an amateur myself I say this with authority) and Cameron is not upset, he’s disappointed. Don’t let Cameron down, Tim. He doesn’t deserve this; not from you, not from anybody. Tim briefly secures the sankaku garami / omoplata, but Jesse slips out before Tim can so much as sweep with it, and really, Tim’s back was flat on the mat. That just wasn’t going to happen. Tim is having a devil of a time on the bottom here. Did somebody say at some point that Tim is a BJJ black belt? Am I remembering that right? Because, I mean, yikes. He seems to have the right idea as often as not, but he looks so anxious to do the right thing that he just loses position before he’s really got it, you know? With a minute to go he needs the sub to pull this out. He tries the juji, you can see him thinking about an omo/sankaku, a triangle choke, but these are half-formed thoughts, nothing more.

This is Jesse 30-27, you’ve got to think. The first half of the second round was the best part of the fight for Tim, but not enough to take the round, I wouldn’t say. In the fight recap, they’re making it sound a lot closer than it probably actually was.

Jesse and Tim embrace in the middle and cry manly tears. And then Jesse vomits manly vomit. “I had eggs,” he offers by way of explanation, and yeah, that’d do it. I am not maligning the good name of eggs, but they are not appropriate at all times and in all circumstances. Holy cow, two judges had it 30-26, which is pretty rough. I wonder which round they saw as 10-8? I definitely wouldn’t have said Tim was close to being finished in either the first or third (certainly not the second).

Jesse thinks winning one more fight would be the icing on the . . . ice cream? “I don’t know if I said that right.” No, but good try, buddy. Good try.

Next week! CB! Who is a jerk! Against Amir! Who has a controversially emo haircut! Also there is a limo! That promises to change everything! You thought you knew! About! The Ultimate Fighter! Finale!

Oh man!