TUF 10: Episode 5 Recap and Thoughts on Stupid

I’m not a Rashad Evans fan, but as this season of the Ultimate Fighter goes on, I find I’m liking “Sugar” Rashad more and more. Still, before I get into the backstage confrontation between Evans and Rampage, I figure it’s worth making a few notes about what happened in the show to help contextualize some of the stupid.

Apart from the adolescent crap about jacking it in the shower (which I really don’t care that much about) and the shoulder injury of future Young and the Restless castmember Matt Mitrione (who I hope gets matched up with Marcus “Big Baby” Jones or Scott Junk, though I think that’s pretty unlikely), we saw Justin Wren (6-1 MMA) defeat UFC veteran Wes Sims.

Wren put on an incredible performance and definitely earned some respect from fans. As a world class Greco-Roman wrestler, I was surprised to see such a clean arm-triangle (even more impressive than the choke TUF 8 winner Ryan Bader landed in his fight to get into the house). Against a solid veteran like Sims, that’s a great accomplishment, and I hope that Wren goes far in the tournament. Rashad’s coaches seemed very happy with him in training (especially when they mentioned that they considered him a top three fighter in what is a pretty tough house).

What was disappointing, yet again, was the failure of the Team Rampage staff to offer any support for Sims following the fight. Sims was choked unconscious in the bout (he was actually out for four or five seconds before Herb Dean stopped the fight), and it took him a while to regain himself. The fact that there wasn’t anyone from the Team Rampage coaching staff in the cage is ridiculous. The decision to leave Demico Rogers in the cage was ridiculous and unprofessional. The decision to leave Sims in the cage was indefensible.

Then we got some video of the Team Rampage coaches getting down on their team in the back locker room. And while some have already commented on the stupidity of Tiki Ghosn (11-7 MMA, 0-4 UFC) expressing frustration with Wes Sims (22-12-1-2 MMA, 0-3 UFC), it’s hard to take Ghosn seriously as the guy hardly has any respectability as a fighter in the top tier. At least there was some controversy in Sims’ initial loss to Frank Mir. Ghosn’s entire career on the large stage has consisted of decisive losses, not to mention his 0-3 WEC run. Hector Ramirez (8-3-1 MMA, 0-2 UFC) is a similar, though more recent, story, but since Ramirez wasn’t caught on camera, it’s hard to get upset with him.

This season has been painful for Rampage. It’s easy to relate to the frustration. Still, whether he’s a fighter or not, when confronted by Rashad, it’s clear that he was in the wrong. Putting aside the failures (often intentional) of video editing to capture the reality of the situation, the things that Rampage was accused of are definitely real. He did leave his fighters alone in the cage. He did miss a pre-fight warm up. These aren’t debatable.

As far as the next few episodes go, it will be interesting to see how the match-ups go. I think that the smart gameplan would be to put Matt Mitrione in against Zak Jensen, the last pick and weakest link in the house, and then match-up the big, powerful Wessel and Scott Junk to save the bigger, more powerful Marcus Jones for Team Rashad’s experienced and undefeated technician Darill Schoonover. Of course, any potential match-up with a giant like Jones can backfire, but overall, I think that would be a solid gameplan. Whether Rashad thought so remains to be seen.

I will say this, the season is turning out to be a pretty good one, and they’re definitely going to pick up a lot of fighters from this season. Whether they stick around or not is debatable, but it’ll be interesting.