TUF Talks: The Ultimate Fighter Season 13 Episode 1

Hello once more fans and friends, it’s my pleasure to welcome you back to “TUF Talks”. “TUF Talks” is my weekly, full recap of the latest episode of the UFC’s popular reality TV show “The Ultimate Fighter”. Today’s episode marks the season premiere of the landmark thirteenth season of TUF. With two massive Heavyweights in Junior dos Santos and Brock Lesnar coaching a team of very varied Welterweights, it should be a very interesting season. So let’s dive in with the inaugural edition of “TUF Talks” for “The Ultimate Fighter” Season 13.

The episode begins with the standard pre-episode hype video, and before long we cut to the TUF gym and get our first view of this season’s cast. Dana White stands in front of the TUF fighters and gives his standard profanity-laced “do you want to be a fighter?” speech. He also reveals two things: the “fight to get into the house” rule was abandoned for this season, but the “wild card” rule is making a return. After introducing the cast to their coaches, it’s time for the fighters to get some training in so their coaches can evaluate them.

We get a standard montage of fighters training while the coaches and their staff look on. Brock Lesnar employs an interesting tactic: multiple times he takes a fighter aside and questions them one-on-one, asking things like “Why are you here?” and “Do you think you can win this competition”? Junior dos Santos makes a bit of a joke about not being able to do the same since he can’t speak English, and already I’m beginning to notice a key difference between the two: JDS is far more laid-back, while Lesnar looks to be taking this job very seriously.

Eventually it comes time to pick sides, and the official breakdown of the teams looks like this.

Team Lesnar:  Len Bentley, Charlie Rader, Tony Ferguson, Clay Harvison, Myles Jury, Chris Cope, and Nordin Asrih.

Team dos Santos: Shamar Bailey, Ryan McGillivray, Javier Torres, Ramsey Nijem, Zach Davis, Mick Bowman, and Keon Caldwell.

After that we get the first look at the fighters entering the TUF mansion, which is looking amazing as always. Surprisingly, no early hijinks ensue. Instead, a line in the sand is clearly drawn: Team Lesnar stays on the second floor, while Team dos Santos stays on the first.

We then get some training montages before we get the first shocking development of the season. It’s revealed that Myles Jury, who injured himself during the evaluation phase but looked fine afterwards, has in fact torn his ACL. With such a serious injury comes a serious conclusion: he is medically forbidden to fight. Dana White gives Jury his seal of approval, but also his marching orders. Jury is quickly replaced by Chuck O’Neil.

It’s now time to pick the first fight, and with Lesnar winning an earlier coin flip that gave him the right to pick the first fighter, it’s JDS that gets to pick the first fight. Junior makes the obvious but tactical decision: he puts his top pick against Lesnar’s last. Shamar Bailey will face Nordin Asrih in the first fight of TUF 13.

After a small bit of fight hype that includes looking at the fighter’s different backgrounds, the first fight gets underway.

There’s only one way to describe this fight: the wrestler dominated the striker. From the opening bell of the first round to the final bell of the second, Shamar Bailey put on a grappling clinic against Asrih. Asrih spent all but a handful of moments of this fight on his back, trying and failing to stop Bailey’s smothering style of wrestling and Ground and Pound. Asrih never got a chance to get going, and in Round 2 in particular, Asrih spent most of the fight getting mounted at will after he missed a high kick and slipped.

The end comes, and it’s no contest: Shamar Bailey wins via Unanimous Decision. We get the traditional post-fight reaction from the fighters and coaches: Lesnar is disappointed, Asrih makes a joke about missing his high kick but also looks very disappointed, Junior is glad Bailey kept to the gameplan, Bailey is glad that he listened to his coaches and says that he trusts them. Unsurprisingly, Dana White isn’t a fan of Bailey’s grinding style and summed up his feelings by saying “Round 1: Shamar Bailey lays on Nordin Asrih. Round 2: Shamar Bailey lays on Nordin Asrih.”

Our final look at TUF 13’s debut episode sees Team dos Santos celebrating, while coach Lesnar is not amused and says that putting their top pick against his last isn’t something to cheer for. He also tells a somber Team Lesnar that this fight was a perfect display of how important wrestling is in MMA.

The episode ends with a look at some of the things we can look forward to throughout the season: frat-boy hijinks will ensue, stuff will be broken, training will take place, and there will be guest appearances.

Overall, this was a pretty solid episode of TUF. It covered all of the interesting stuff we needed to know in order to get fully invested later in the season, and it features some very interesting interactions with the coaches and their teams. While it appears that Lesnar and dos Santos have no real rivalry to speak of, they do have vastly different coaching styles and I think that difference is going to lead to some great drama in the near-future. In regards to the quality of the first season’s fight, it certainly wasn’t the best TUF fight ever and I’m sure some fans out there would consider it boring. But in the end? A mediocre fight is better than a bad fight, and I’ve seen plenty of worse fights in my time with TUF.

Stay tuned next week, fans and friends. “TUF Talks” is back in full force. And what about you? What’s your opinion on this first episode of TUF 13?