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TV Reviews
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The Ultimate Fighter
THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER REPORT 5/14: Hyden's rundown of all the fights, all the drama on Spike TV By Frank Hyden, MMATorch contributer
May 14, 2008 - 10:47:35 PM
TheUltimate Fighter review
May 14, 2008
By Frank Hyden
We
start off immediately with the fight announcement. It's going to be
Gerald Harris vs. Amir Sadollah. Gerald is a great wrestler and loves
dropping people on their heads which worries Amir greatly. Both guys
are shown training with their respective teams. Gerald is ripped. Amir
is rocking the old Eddie Guerrero, Miguel Torres mullet. Forrest
Griffin makes a side bet with Amir that if Amir loses Forrest will
shave his own head. If Amir wins he can shave half of Forrest's head
and Forrest has to keep his hair like that for the rest of this season.
FIGHT- Gerald Harris vs. Amir Sadollah
Gerald
has a 2 inch reach advantage. Both men are the same height. Josh
Rosenthal is the official and he makes his usual low-key call to arms
for the fighters. Sounds similar to a dad talking to a 3 year old. It's
not a bad thing, but it's certainly a change-up from the usual yelling
the official does pre-match.
ROUND 1-
Gerald gets on top but there's not a lot of action. 2 minutes in and
still not much has happened. They finally scramble up and Gerald gets a
huge slam. Somehow Amir stays awake and fights back to his fight.
Gerald with another slam. Amir grabbed the cage and might have had a
point deducted. Amir gets back to his feet and barely misses a knee
that would have ended it. Amir takes Gerald's back for a moment before
they rise again. The round ends with Amir fighting off a slam attempt
by Gerald.
ROUND 2- Amir opens with some
leg kicks while Gerald looks for another slam. They exchange shots and
Amir lands a knee that drops Gerald. He covers up and the ref stops the
fight. Gerald is screaming that he wasn't out and is extremely upset.
He storms to the dressing room and is comforted by his teammates and
coaches. Quinton "Rampage" Jackson tells him all he can is learn from
this experience.
WINNER- Amir Sadollah by TKO
The
next fight is announced as Cale Yarbrough vs. Patrick Schultz. Both
guys just want to punch each other until one is knocked out. Neither
one seems too interested intakedowns or groundfighting. It should be a
stand-up war. No side bets prior to this fight, unfortunately. I would
vote in favor of Patrick shaving his head. Those frosted spikes, or
whatever they are, aren't exactly my favorite hairstyle. But I'm not
exactly the picture of style myself so I'll just be quiet.
FIGHT - Cale Yarbrough vs. Patrick Schultz
Patrick has a 2 inch reach advantage. Both men are the same height. Deja vu. Steve Mazzagatti is the official.
ROUND
1- They both start with early jabs. Nice punches are thrown by both
fighters. Patrick lands a big right but Cale takes it. Patrick is just
throwinghaymaker after haymaker . Cale slips and falls. They're both
throwing tons of punches. Patrick keeps throwing the same right over
and over and over. Cale takes Patrick down. They get up. Cale takes him
down again. The round ends.
ROUND 2- Both
fighters throw some early kicks and punches. Cale takes Patrick down.
Cale with the ground and pound. Cale has Patrick in Team Forrest's
corner and the coaches are helping him tear Patrick apart. Cale is just
pounding Patrick. This is pretty boring to watch. It's as if Patrick
isn't even trying to get up. He's just lying there taking a beating.
The round ends with Cale having been on top of Patrick for practically
the entire round. Most everyone there is expecting a 3rd round but the
judges see it differently.
WINNER- Cale Yarbrough by decision
Rampage
is irate at the decision. Forrest is in the octagon and Patrick tells
him to get back to his side of the cage and that he can't wait until
Rampage fights Forrest. Rampage stomps off and bets his fight purse
that his match with Forrest won't go to a decision. Forrest heads to
the back and we get a shot of Dana White saying that his 2jokester coaches want to Ken and Tito each other. That's a great line.
Neither
fight this week was really all that exciting. Cale vs. Patrick was
reminiscent of a few bar brawls I've seen, lots of punches thrown but
not a lot of violence. Patrick is just too one-dimensional. But it was
fairly entertaining to see Amir basically doing the splits trying to
avoid more slams from Gerald. I am disappointed that we didn't get to
see Amir shave half of Forrest's head but maybe we'll see that next
week. I also want to see what happened in the dressing room area after
Forrest went back there. Something was getting broken.
NEXT WEEK- CB Dollaway vs. Nick Klein and the quarterfinal match-ups are announced.
