Episode 5 - February 14
Week Five on the UFC
contest show, The Ultimate Fighter, and the "Game
Show Man" Joe Van Ginkel is back again. Here we go.
Once again, the episode
opens with the aftermath of last week's fight, where
Team Liddell middleweight Diego Sanchez made Team
Couture's Alex Karalexis tap out. Bits of conversation
and confessionals indicate that the fight went basically
as the contestants imagined it would, with Sanchez
scoring the submission. Team Couture continues to
flounder in the contest.
The teams return to the
house to decompress. As the days go by, the contestants
are beginning to lose their mind. In the meantime, Team
Couture middleweight Chris Leben decides to undergo his
pre-fight ritual of dying his hair blood red.
Back in the gym, Team
Liddell undergoes strength training with coach Chuck
Liddell's strength training coach, Tom Fries. Liddell
has them work with Fries in an effort to expose them to
the kinds of things he does in order to get ready for a
fight.
Meanwhile, UFC president
Dana White appears at the house, and informs Team
Couture (who is still at the house while Team Liddell
trains) that he is going to take them out tomorrow
night. The fighters react, predictably, with great
enthusiasm. White sees that the fighters have doing a
great job (and that they're about to start clawing the
walls down), and will be taking everyone out to the Hard
Rock Hotel celebrate. When Team Liddell arrives, Team
Couture plays a prank on them telling them that White
said that they should go to bed wearing jeans and boots
and holding their flashlights. After measuring their
reaction, they tell them the real news and Team Liddell
goes understandably nuts. The assembled fighters then
make a pact, that since they're all competing against
one another, that they will all drink alcohol
"equally."
The next day, coach Randy
Couture takes Team Couture into the Octagon for sparring
sessions. The fighters don headgear and boxing gloves
to work on their technique. But during the session,
Couture, practicing a takedown with light heavyweight
Alex Schoenauer, accidentally rams into middleweight
Nate Quarry, injuring his left ankle. Couture and
boxing coach Peter Welch carry Quarry out of the ring to
examine him. The medic on scene and Couture both
recommend he get an x-ray.
That night Quarry returns
on crutches ("Kon'nichi wa, bitches."), and he says that
while the ankle is not broken, it's still severely
damaged and it may be enough to knock him out of the
contest. But it's not bad enough to keep him from going
out with the gang to the Hard Rock Café. Everyone gets
into their finest duds and pile into the vans to go out
to eat. The fighters sit down at the sushi bar at the
Hard Rock and commence eating and drinking lots of
alcohol. Amongst those who are most drunk is Bobby
Southworth who begins talking smack.
The drunk and disorderly
behavior continues all the way back to the house. Diego
Sanchez has completely passed out (even barfs in the
toliet and starts convulsing at one point); Josh
Koscheck is going berserk, and the beer continues to
flow. There is much discussion about Sanchez's
condition, and eventually it turns into an argument
between Leben and Southworth. They exchange words and
nearly punches, but the other fighters stop them. But
Southworth keeps at him, and gets a little TOO
personal. Leben nearly kills him, but Quarry and Swick
restrain him. Eventually Southworth comes back and
tries to apologize. Leben manages to accept his
apology, and after Quarry tries to console him, decides
to cool out by sleeping on the front lawn.
But Koscheck can't leave
well enough alone, and so with Southworth's help, he
decides to play a prank on Leben by spraying him with
the front lawn water house. The water spray wakes Leben
and sends him on a foul-mouthed rampage. He crashes
through the house, breaking the glass on the front door,
smashing a door, and Southworth laughing at him all the
way. The rampage damages the knuckles on Leben's right
hand, spills his blood all over the house floor and
before he can attack Southworth (who is in a fighting
stance), Josh Rafferty and Quarry come out to stop him.
The van comes to take Leben to the hospital to check on
his hand.
Opinions differ on what
happened: Leben has been a loudmouth all through the
contest, but Koscheck and Southworth clearly provoked
him into a fight. (Mike Swick: "If you think there isn't
gonna be a meeting with Dana (White) tomorrow, you've
got another f---ing thing coming.") The next morning,
the parties are taken in front of White to argue their
case. Eventually, after watching tape of the events in
question, and consulting with UFC co-owner Lorenzo
Fertita, they come to a mutually agreeable decision:
there will be no light heavyweight challenge this week;
instead Leben and Koscheck will fight in the Octagon.
BUT
That's where the episode
ends. Will Leben get his revenge on Koscheck? Or will
the joke be on Koscheck? Find out in next week's
recap. For GSNN, this is the "Game Show Man" Joe Van
Ginkel, saying Godspeed, and spread the love. |