The Ultimate Fighter featured an all-Team Tate episode last week, and Julianna Peña advanced to the finals by toppling Sarah Moras.
This week, it’s an all-Team Rousey male bout. Or so we were led to believe. David Grant was set to take on Anthony Gutierrez, but weight-cutting issues reared its head again. Gutierrez missed the mark, Dana White booted him, and Grant backed his way into a spot in the finals. That, along with the coach’s challenge, helped fill out the episode.
Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly for the latest installment of TUF:
The Good:
- Ronda Rousey showed up at the house for a cookout. She has been one of the more involved coaches in recent seasons. She has done a lot for her team, and that level of caring
shines through. - Rousey’s passion is on full display in this episode and it is welcome. She has received a lot of negative feedback, but there is no denying that she legitimately cares about her team. The same cannot be said for past season’s coaches.
- The armbar legend taught her technique to her team, and she had no problems telling her team that she’ll submit anyone with it, so it didn’t matter if they spread the technique around. Confidence she does not lack.
- The Coaches’ Challenge was one of the more competitive ones the show has had, and it was fun to watch. Rousey and Miesha Tate were neck-and-neck almost the entire way up the rock climbing wall. Rousey won, and celebrated with double-birds toward Tate all the way to the ground.
- Manny Gamburyan pulled no punches with Gutierrez, and it was magnificent. It made it known Gutierrez does not deserve to be in the UFC, and Gamburyan let him know he made a huge mistake.
- Rousey went to tell Dana that she would make a weight-cut of her own after Gutierrez missed, but White explained to her the pressures of TUF. It was a quality back-and-forth between the two. Insightful into both Rousey and White, and into the show itself.
The Bad:
- Commercials leading into the show foreshadowed the weight cut, and it took a bit of surprise away from the show. As a viewer, that is infuriating.
- Gutierrez’s junk food habit finally came back to bite him. This episode featured many more shots of him not eating clean at the house with an upcoming weight cut.
- Gutierrez missing weight was bad. Plain and simple. If there was a “worse” category it’d go there.
- After White gave Gutierrez a chance to speak on his behalf he gave a paint-by-numbers speech to everyone. It did not come off as sincere, it came off as someone regurgitating information in the hopes that it’d make it seem sincere. Adiós, Anthony.
The Ugly:
- After winning the coach’s challenge, Rousey had expletives and middle fingers for Tate all the way down. This rivalry is very real, and Rousey hates Tate. I love real rivalries, but at some point there is a tipping point. We are reaching it.
