The Ultimate Fighter Season Five premiere

I was originally going to write this first entry about IFL Battleground. But it's boring, so I am switching to the season premiere of The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) which luckily I've TiVo-ed.

Should be interesting. We've got an Asian guy, for the first time ever on TUF. Many of the martial arts are Asian in origin. Will this guy represent? Or will he dishonor his ancestors? Or will he just be himself and live out some third, less extreme option? There's a 6'4'', 155 pound black guy. He's already annoying me by trying to hide his insecurity behind a facade of overconfidence. There's a gay dude from California, who, judging from the clips of future episodes, will be executing a brave but possibly foolish strategy of attempting to use his homosexuality to his advantage by snuggling with the other guys and sitting on their laps. There's a dude from Maine who owns a seafood restaurant (the “Monstah Lobstah”). The coaches are active MMA fighters B.J. “the Prodigy” Penn (boring nickname) and Jens “Little Evil” Pulver (awesome nickname). And of course, providing cameo appearances will be the head of the UFC, Dana White, the Commissioner-as-Common-Man.

Dana immediately describes this season's contestants as “some crazy motherf----ers.” You think David Stern, the NBA commissioner, would ever go on the air and describe his players as “crazy motherf----ers”?

Here's what I know about B.J. Penn. B.J. has phenomenal, unbelievable flexibility, which is a huge advantage for him when grappling. Submission holds that would cause another man to tap don't cause B.J. any pain at all; in addition, that flexibility enables B.J. to attempt submissions from weird, unexpected angles that the average guy would never be able to take. Perhaps because of his flexibility, B.J. is one of the few men who has ever defeated Matt Hughes. Hughes, as I'm sure many of you know, is one of the greatest pound-for-pound martial artists in the world. Hughes is very tough, very strong, and very skilled. He was the welterweight champ for a long time, easily beating all challengers, including the original UFC superstar, Royce Gracie. Hughes was also a very successful coach on season two of The Ultimate Fighter, when his team won significantly more often than the opposition (coached by Rich Franklin). But B.J. Penn has beaten Hughes (although Hughes got his revenge in the rematch, taking Penn out in the third round).

I know Jens Pulver from Sam Sheridan's excellent book, A Fighter's Heart. Jens trains under Pat Miletich in Iowa. Sheridan related an anecdote told to him by another fighter about his first day training at the Miletich gym. The guy said that he had a lot of anger and just liked to fight. He used to get into fights in bars almost every weekend, often against men taller and heavier than himself. He never lost. Then he started training in MMA with Miletich and was told that he would be a lightweight and only fight against guys his own size. He thought, heck, that's easy. I'll be the best guy here from day one.

Then he met Jens Pulver.

I now learn from the show that Jens and B.J. have fought once, and Pulver won in an upset. They're slated to fight again at the end of this season. Penn will be heavily favored once more.

Pulver wears his baseball cap slanted to the side. I'm going to try not to hold that against him.

We go to commercials as the coaches are beginning to pick teams. Penn has just asked anyone who doesn't want anything to do with Jens Pulver's team to raise their hand. I wouldn't raise mine, but I think some people are going to raise theirs.

The commercials show how far the UFC has come. When I started watching The Ultimate Fighter in season two, it seemed like no one wanted to advertise on the show. The UFC had to pay for a lot of the ads itself: most of the commercials were for UFC pay-per-views and UFC supplements (Xyience). But now they've got big-time advertisers. This first break includes commercials for Burger King, the new Quentin Tarantino movie, and the new Halle Berry-Bruce Willis flick.

We're back from commercial. They replay Penn saying, “If anyone knows, for a complete fact, that they want to be on my team and give 100% and they don't want nothing to do with Jens Pulver's team, raise your hand.” Wow, it looks like three-fourths of the guys in the room raised their hands. Jens has to feel badly. He does. You can tell from his face that he's embarrassed. B.J. counts the number of guys who raised their hands: ten, but he can only pick eight. Nonetheless, he tries to take all ten en masse. Jens says fine, I'll take the remaining guys, that's fine, I'll still beat you.

But that isn't how they're supposed to pick teams, and Dana White looks extremely annoyed, even though, as he says, “I always expect some crazy s--- from B.J.” “You get one pick,” he tells Penn. “Then you take one guy,” he says to Pulver. They keep arguing with him. “It's like f---ing anarchy in here!” says Dana, shaking his head. “Pick one guy!” he tells Penn. And that's the way it's going to be, though neither Penn nor Pulver nor the contestants like it.

Penn picks Gray Maynard first. Jens picks the tall black dude, Corey Hill. Then there's some more trash talking between the coaches, forcing Dana to tell them to “shut the f--- up!” You think NFL commish Roger Goodall talked that way to Pacman Jones at their sit-down in New York City last week? No, but he should have. That would have been sweet.

B.J. ends up with Maynard, Matt Wiman, Gabe Ruediger, Joe Lauzon, Rob Emerson, Andy Wang, Allen Berube, and Noah Thomas. Jens takes Hill, Nate Diaz, Brandon Melendez, Manny Gamburyan, Cole Miller, Brian Geraghty, Wayne Weems, and Marlon Sims. Each team takes a separate van back to the house. Corey Hill starts talking trash in the van, then continues it back at the house. For some unknown reason, he selects Gabe Ruediger as his target. He actually starts barking like a dog at Gabe. Then he circles Gabe like a shark preparing to attack. Gabe maintains eye contact, but doesn't seem to know what to say. Later, he claims he is not intimidated, but I'm not so sure.

Both coaches seem to have assembled good, well-rounded staffs. B.J. has his kick boxing coach, his grappling coach, and his brother. Jens has the boxing coach from Miletich Fighting Systems, a wrestling coach, and a jiujitsu guy. Neither of these coaches is Ken Shamrock. Remember when Shamrock, the season three coach, brought a bodybuilder as an assistant? Not surprisingly, only one of the guys on Shamrock's team won a fight that season. Jens and B.J. have each brought legitimate staffs, guys who will help the contestants get better at MMA.

B.J. got to choose the first fighter, so Jens gets to choose the first fight. He decides to pit Cole Miller, from his team, against Allen Berube from B.J.'s team. Cole is younger and taller, has a longer reach, and is more experienced. It doesn't look good for Allen, the seafood restaurant owner. Even his coach isn't too optimistic, although B.J. does his best to psych Allen up. If Cole has a weakness, it may be that he is really thin, maybe too thin. Allen should go to the body and try to break something, like one of Cole's ribs.

The fight starts. Both guys are cautious. Allen comes forward, throwing jabs from too far away to hit. That's a rookie mistake, or a nervous mistake, or both. He's just wasting energy.

Cole throws a high roundhouse kick that misses. Allen should attack now, while Cole is off-balance from the kick. But he doesn't.

A few moments later, Allen closes the gap and wraps Cole up, going for a take-down. Why? Allen trained in boxing for longer than he has trained in jiujitsu. Closing the gap was good, because Allen doesn't have a long reach and needs to fight on the inside, but once he got there he should have started throwing hooks, uppercuts, and knees.

Instead, they go to the ground, where Cole has the advantage. He almost gets Allen in a guillotine choke. B.J. is shouting “Watch the guillotine, Monstah!” (Listening to B.J. continually call Allen “Monstah” is hilarious on several levels. B.J. is Hawaiian, but he has adopted Allen's New England-accented pronunciation of “monster.” And Allen is only about five-and-a-half feet tall, 155 pounds, but he has acquired the nickname “Monstah” because the name of his restaurant is “Monstah Lobstah.” Or maybe the restaurant is really called “Monster Lobster,” but nobody knows that because of the way Allen pronounces his r's.)

Allen narrowly escapes the guillotine but moves into a position that exposes him to an arm-bar. B.J. is still shouting, but now it's “Monstah, watch the arm-bar! Watch the arm-bar, Monstah!” The arm-bar attempt fails, so Cole then tries to set a triangle choke. Allen has one hand free, in position to punish Cole with some hammer strikes to the face, but instead he just wastes his time punching ineffectually. On the ground like he is, it's impossible for Allen to put any body weight behind his attack, which is why he should use an attack that doesn't require body weight to be effective. Maybe he doesn't know about hammer strikes because he hasn't trained in karate. I think Allan has only trained in jujitsu and boxing, and neither of those styles uses hammer strikes. Whether that's the reason or not, the bottom line is that Allen never mounts any kind of effective attack with his free arm. So, of course, Cole is able to set the triangle choke perfectly, and Allen taps.

B.J. is magnanimous in defeat. “For what Monstah had, that was his 100%. If he could have given more, he would have given more.” Jens is also kind. “It was a good technical fight. That was a good start.”

No, it wasn't. Allen fought like an idiot. He wasn't good enough at the ground game to take it to the ground. He should have been avoiding being taken to the ground. Instead, he stupidly took the fight there himself, and he paid the price.

Oh, well. The New England accent was good to hear while it lasted.