Five Wishes and a Question-The Ultimate Fighter: U.S. vs. U.K.

Five Wishes and a Question-The Ultimate Fighter: U.S. vs. U.K.

Many of us have already acknowledged that although we love the sport and the show is almost always entertaining, “The Ultimate Fighter” has gotten a bit stale.  It doesn’t help that Spike TV and the UFC have pumped out this show at a ridiculous pace since its successful first season.  Therefore, even though (as Dana White eluded) the format of having American fighters against their English counterparts is a little corny, it’s a change that might revitalize the show a little bit.

Still, there are a lot of things we can hope for to make the show better, so why not vocalize them?  Without further ado, there are five wishes and one question for the next season of “The Ultimate Fighter”.

Five Wishes-

1. First of all, can we get a break from the bodily fluid-related shenanigans this season?  Sure, we all watched with something akin to horrified amazement as high-level professional athletes gobbled up food besmirched by, well, man juice.  Still, though, a little bit of guys eating food with urine or worse mixed in goes a long way.

2. I may be in the minority here, but I hope there is not a Junie Browning version 2.0 on this season’s installment.  One of the problems with the way that Browning’s behavior was tolerated, and (let’s face it) promoted was that plenty of other fighters will be encouraged to be complete jackasses, as well.  Even if Browning had been kicked off the show, he’d be much more marketable in the MMA world as “the crazy drunk guy from TUF” than “the guy who hardly talked from TUF”, right?  While Browning’s antics made for some instances of must-see TV, I think that there is already plenty of potential for conflict and interesting situations without guys drunkenly throwing glasses into other fighters’ faces and then breaking down and drunkenly sobbing.

3. Can we let the guys get out of the house a bit, finally?  I know the basic ideas behind keeping the guys locked up: we get tension between bored and agitated fighters, many of whom know they’ll be fighting each other in a matter of days.  However, letting the guys get out of the house a bit provides plenty of opportunities for great moments, as well.  I think I’d rather see the guys go out and try their luck at a local nightclub (and see how they handle themselves in such a situation) than get drunk in the house, talk crap to one another and throw objects into the pool.

4. Is it finally time to step up the amount of training footage we see?  I’ll be the first to admit that we see a lot more of the guys preparing in the gym than we did early in the series, as the UFC and Spike TV understand that fans are smarter now and more tolerant of training footage than they might have been when they were less knowledgeable about the sport.  However, I think it would be great to get a bit more footage of guys learning new techniques or working out with one another, without the MTV-style quick cuts.

5. For the in-ring portion of the show, I hope that we can have more polished all-around fighters this time around.  This is probably just a sign of the times, as the UFC already has the vast majority of promising young fighters in the world already under contract, especially in certain weight divisions, but some of the fights in recent seasons have been just plain hideous.  There are guys out there that have either next to no experience on the ground, or next to no ability in the stand-up, and it shows.  Again, maybe it’s just because a lot of the top talent has been mined and most great up-and-comers come right into the UFC instead of being on the show, but there are a lot more guys with less than 5 professional fights than in earlier season.  One thing’s for sure: it seems that the days of getting polished fighters like a younger Diego Sanchez or Joe Stevenson on the show (who both had plenty of fights, including in some bigger promotions) are over.

A Question-

So, what do they plan to do if we get to, say, the semi-finals, and there are only representatives of one country left?  Theoretically, this is possible, along with scenarios where three guys from one country and one guy from another make the semis, or maybe there are only one or two guys left from one or the other by the second round.  In the past, these circumstances just exposed how ludicrous the “team” format really was, as fighters would have to change teams as the show neared the end.  However, by upping the stakes and setting the teams ahead of time as the U.S. vs. the U.K., there is even more to lose.  I mean, the concept loses its luster if Michael Bisping is coaching Americans by the third round of the tournament, right?

I get why we have teams.  I’ve read up on social experiments where all you have to do is take strangers in a room and separate them into groups, and they will divide themselves and begin to judge the other group in wholly new terms.  I understand that this natural conflict is highly elevated when you get volatile personalities who fight each other for a living into the frustrating situation of being in a house and doing nothing but sit there and be bored or train.  However, most seasons, the frailty of the team concept is exposed when Team A eliminates most of Team B, and the more heightened the tension between teams was beforehand, the more silly it looks when a hated member of one team must join another because of logistics.

Then again, who knows?  Maybe the format will start off with the two countries as bitter rivals, before slowly earning each others’ respect a la Rocky IV?  You know, “if you can change, and I can change, maybe we can all change”?  Okay, probably not.  But the season should be as entertaining as always.

by Jon Hartley for Fightmania.com

Tags: Dana White, Diego Sanchez, Joe Stevenson, UFC