TUF 7 Episode 9

It was another good week on TUF featuring two fights. I'm glad they've gone back to this format until the semi finals. This week featured the four teammates from Forrest's camp who had to fight each other. Forrest wouldn't choose who he cornered so there was a coin flip and Rampage got Dante and Matt. There were brief weigh in and training clips but nothing important. Although I will say this, Rampage looked very disinterested in coaching up Forrest's guys. He looked more intrigued by Matt but I don't understand this approach. Look, if you know one of your guys is not in the fight why can't you treat Forrest's guys like you would treat anyone else? I'll agree that you barely know them or how they fight but the least you can do is train them and prep them as hard as you would anyone on your team before heading into the biggest fight of their lives. But Rampage just took a nap (literally). In any case there was some weird lead up to Jesse v. Dante that profiled what a weird kid Jesse is. He eats total crap and is proud of it (which I honestly don't know how he gets away with it as a fighter) and he peed on himself instead of just going inside and using the bathroom like a human being. I'm not even sure what to say about all that so let's just move on to the fight.

Round 1: Jesse took Dante right to the ground and put some good ground and pound on him for the whole five minutes.

Round 2: Jesse looked a little tired but still was able to get Dante to the ground but didn't score much damage and basically took a lay and pray approach but still controlled the round which lead to a unanimous decision for Jesse.

I'm not really sure what Dante's approach was here. I mean I can understand how in the beginning he thought he could catch Jesse with his BJJ but after he got pounded out in the first round I thought he would try to keep it standing up where he at least had a chance to win the fight. Rampage was telling Dante to get up the whole second round but Dante just refused. Jesse didn't look good at all (which I agree with Dana White on) but Dante didn't do a damn thing for 10 minutes. With that stinker out of the way we move on to a much better fight between Matt and Amir.

Round 1: These boys were trading the whole round. Matt caught Amir with some good punches and was very aggressive and Amir caught Matt with some good knees (one of which really hurt Matt). Amir showed some good counter striking and a very good chin.

Round 2: Matt came out strong but seemed to gas out immediately. Amir sensed this and went in for the kill pounding Matt standing up with punches, kicks, and knees. Finally Matt had to take it to the ground for survival but unfortunately Amir looked better in the scramble and Matt was so tired he basically fell into the triangle choke that ended the fight.

This was a great toe to toe battle with Amir pulling out a surprising submission victory (surprising in the fact that he is basically a muy thai fighter). I think Amir is a contender and depending on his match up in the semis has a shot at the final. On a different note it was good to see in both of these fights between friends the sportsmanship after the fights. Both guys were happy for their friend instead of being pissed at themselves. It's a nice change in TUF where usually these guys can be egotistical, spoiled, ass***** (cough, CB). This sets up the two inter squad fights for the next episode of CB v. Cale which should be a good blood feud and Tim v. Dan. We can get back to the team v. team format so maybe Rampage will actually be interested in coaching next week. I look forward to two interesting fights. Stay tuned next week for my TUF recap, EliteXC and WEC reviews, as well as my UFC 85 preview. Until then,

Soccer kicks and head stomps...