That and more from our brand new Mixed Martial Arts correspondent after the jump.
After trash-talking hellion Junie Browning eked out a decision against Rolando Delgado last week, his coach Frank Mir lit into him like a badass mom. "How dare you gas out early, Junie? You didn't even knock out that wussbag. You're a disappointing bitch!" (We're paraphrasing here.) The coach also warned Junebug not to create any more "fiascos" outside of the ring. A futile plea, we hope.
Training-wise, Mir imported Wanderlei Silva's Brazilian conditioning coach, who got downright aquatic on the boys, forcing them to run on treadmills with snorkels taped to their mouths. Then he had the team plunge into giant trash cans full of ice, for 3 minutes at a time, to pull blood back into the core of the body and reduce inflammation. Talk about shrinkage!
While Mir was all business this week, opposing coach "Minotauro" Nogueira kept things light. The red team's training was, let's just say, unorthodox. The fellas were leap-frogging each other and tussling in playful, giggly scrums that resembled, if anything, a drunken orgy in ancient Greece.
Highlights of this ep? The red team threw a birthday dinner in the house for coach Nogueira, curing him of his homesickness for the first time all season. Cuuute!.. Prankmaster Krzysztof Soszynski, went dark and conceptual, turning Jules Bruchez' bed into a gravesite, complete with flowers, candles, tombstone, and body bag. Did he know this episode would air on Halloween week? Brilliant. And when Junie let slip (fiasco?) that Vinny trash-talked Nogueira's jiu-jitsu, the two Brazilians got into a long, heated tiff in Portuguese (with subtitles), that, no lie, with it's verite style and uber-sensitive points of view, played out like a French New Wave art film. It really did. You close your eyes... It's Godard!
Alrightie, kids. Let's wrap things up with some low-key violence, shall we? Vinny Magalhaes, black belt and 4-time world jiu-jitsu champ vs. totally unintimidating southpaw puncher, Jules Bruchez. The fight was an utter bore until, late in the first round, when Vinny threw the flying arm-bar he promised earlier in the ep. The flexible Brazilian mounted Jules (boy, does that sound wrong), then forced the southerner to tap out with a gogoplata, the ultra-rare submission maneuever that basically involves choking someone with your ankle. We'll say it again. Choking someone with your ankle. No, that's not a typo. Look.
Next week, knuckleheads!
-- James Cohen
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"The Ultimate Fighter 8": You Gotta Fight For Your Right (To Keep Fighting)