In our latest edition of Total MMA Radio, Dave and Alan preview the UFC’s Affliciton-Killer card and Dave talks with THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER Amir Sadollah.
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Your roundtable:
DW: Dave Walsh
AC: Alan Conceicao
LC: Lee Casebolt
JS: Jonathan Snowden
TUF Final: CB vs. Amir
LC: Picking the finale is (almost) always hard. A case like this, where you’ve got two guys with very little previous experience, is even harder. Anybody who watched the show has seem Amir’s entire career, and now he’s had, what, six weeks to change up his game. CB’s case isn’t quite as dramatic, but isn’t far off. I’d have to go with Amir, though. He won the first fight, he trains at a better camp, and he appears (disclaimer about the dangers of television editing HERE) to be way less cocky. Amir by decision.
AC: If the finale itself is as good as their first fight, all bets are off. I’m thinking CB will look back at this performance on the show and work his cardio and then wrestle down Amir repeatedly. Amir’s gonna give as good as he gets for awhile. What does bother me is the question of where Amir goes from here, regardless of whether he wins or loses. He beat a lot of very solid pros on the show with no actual pro MMA experience. A slight bump up in competition puts him in really deep water very fast.
DW: I only know of what I’ve read in Kendall’s posts, so I must say go Amir. That is all.
JS: There is no reason that CB shouldn’t win this fight. When you take two relatively inexperienced fighters and put them in together, the rule of thumb is always bet on the wrestler. So I’m betting on the wrestler. But my heart will be with Amir.
I can offer nothing by way of introduction that would set the stage more fittingly for the no doubt earth-shattering events about to unfold on this, our season finale of The Ultimate Fighter, than these words from Dana White himself. BEHOLD:
We’re all of us accustomed to “Boom, another hit is landed,” but “Boom, the shit hit the fan,” that’s something else altogether. Something I don’t know if I’m ready for. Something I don’t know if we, as a people, are ready for. But stiffen the sinews! Summon up the blood! Lend the eye a terrible aspect! Other stuff too! This is a once more into the breach situation, basically.
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!
This week! Quarter finals continue! CB fights Cale! Tim fights Handsome Dan! Jeremy May suggests Jesse is a “little bitch”! Semi-final matches announced! All kinds of stuff!
Last week’s quarter final matches were pretty OK, in that while they produced one absolutely nothing fight, as freaky Big John McCarthy clone Jesse Taylor laid atop an attempt-attempting Dante Rivera for two nothing rounds, we also got a really nice showing from Amir Sadollah, who finished the feared and much celebrated Matt Brown with a neat triangle choke. And you know what, one kind of nothing fight, one nice little fight like Amir/Matt, I would take that combo every week, really. I would take that every week all day, if you are hip to that lingo.
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?
So, last week was not the best of weeks. As far as The Ultimate Fighter goes, I mean. My week was excellent. But between Jeremy May’s truly ludicrous flailing against the reputedly, potentially, provisionally ferocious Matt Brown — who, it must be said, underperformed, as much as that is possible in a first-round head kick KO win — and whatever it was, exactly, that Luke Zachrich and Daniel Cramer were doing to and with one another for ten minutes, it was not The Ultimate Fighter at its best. Or was it? That kind of fight might well be exactly what The Ultimate Fighter is for, at least according to the guy running the show. While it was somewhat disheartening to hear Dana White sing the praises of Zachrich/Cramer, in that it was plainly shit, you believed Dana when he said he thought it was “a great fight.” He seemed not the least bit disingenuous. And this is the man with more control over the direction of our beloved (well, beliked) sport than any other. Not that I’m hating. I just think Dana and I have fundamentally different aesthetics. But this is ground we’ve covered already (w/r/t hoodies, you’ll recall), and what in the end can you say but de gustibus non est disputandum, right?
This will be part of an ongoing attempt to watch the watchdog. The MMA internet is filled with what are almost entirely uninformed opinions and bad journalism. We will shine a bright light of shame on the worst offenders here. Do better MMA web. Do better. Don’t make Eddie Goldman cry.
One of many pro wrestling websites to make the perilous leap to MMA coverage is 411mania.com. Recently John Curry, a man who will soon take the novel step of removing his carcass from the couch to step on the mat with his heros like Jens Pulver and Jorge Gurgel, said TUF has actually hurt fighters who appeared on the show. This ought to be good.
