TUF Talks: "The Ultimate Fighter" Season 13 Episode 6

Hello again fans and friends and welcome back to another edition of “TUF Talks”! “TUF Talks” is my weekly rundown of the latest episode of the popular UFC reality TV show “The Ultimate Fighter”, with a heaping helping of commentary thrown in. With this week’s episode, TUF Season 13 is now six episodes deep. With Coach Brock Lesnar and his team back in the winner’s circle, it’s now time for the final two opening-round bouts of TUF 13. Who will win, and which two fighters will go on to be this season’s wild card participants? Let’s find out with a new edition of “TUF Talks”.

The episode begins with Team Junior dos Santos somber in defeat. Coach JDS tries to motivate his team by saying that the UFC looks for fun fights and entertaining fighters, win or lose. However, Assistant Coach Lew Polley just can’t sit idly by and instead once again challenges JDS’s authority, saying that a win is a win no matter what, and that winning a boring fight is better than losing an entertaining one. Junior dos Santos appears to be fed up with Lew Polley, and the situation looks to be coming to another boiling point.

Over at Team Lesnar, it seems as if Len Bentley is being groomed as Team Lesnar’s wild card fighter, but unfortunately, he goes down hard in training and may have injured his knee. With this injury and Clay Harvison’s possibly-fractured finger ending last week’s episode, a frustrated Coach Lesnar storms out of the building, fumes for a bit, then heads back in to attend to his fighters.

Luckily for Team Lesnar, it seems as if lightning can strike twice: not only does Len Bentley avoid serious injury, so does Clay Harvison. Even though episode five ended with one of Clay Harvison’s pinkie bones poking out of his skin, it turns out that the bone was just dislocated badly, and not broken. Bentley receives equally good news: his ACL is intact and he too only suffered a dislocation.

Things are much grimmer over at Team JDS, with Junior deciding to go to one of his trusted trainers to get his opinion on how to deal with the Lew Polley situation. We then get one of the bigger shockers of the season: after one more face-to-face confrontation, Coach Dos Santos has had enough and fires Lew Polley on the spot.

After that it’s time for the final fight picks. With Brock Lesnar in control, the final two fights will be Tony Ferguson vs. Justin Edwards and Chuck O’Neil vs. Zach Davis. We then get the normal amount of pre-fight hype and some final training montages. We also see Team JDS’s reaction to Lew Polley leaving: most say he’ll be missed, but they don’t dwell on Polley’s dismissal for very long. And then the first fight of the night gets underway.

Tony Ferguson vs. Justin Edwards ends up being a huge breath of fresh air, with both men swinging for the fences and landing several big blows on each other. We get several good minutes of non-stop action before the fight goes to the floor. And in what should be the most remarkable finish of the season, Tony Ferguson manages to KO Justin Edwards with an upkick.

Team Lesnar is elated, of course, while Edwards is very down on himself. UFC President Dana White compliments both men. We then get some more pre-fight hype and training montages for the second fight of the night, including some jokes and humor. Before long, the second fight gets underway.

Both men end up doing some damage on the feet, but a majority of this fight plays out on the ground. Both men look pretty evenly-matched, but Chuck O’Neil makes a critical mistake and ends up caught in a Triangle, tapping out only seconds later.

The typical post-fight reaction shots are shown, and then we get to see both coaches as well as UFC President Dana White hammer out the wildcard fight. Several different fighters are interviewed, with Dana White disliking how no one is outright demanding that they receive a second chance. White also talks about how strange it was to see Brock Lesnar and Junior dos Santos not only get along, but be open and honest with each other and agree with each other on a majority of things. The irony of the situation is not lost on me, because it’s that exact dynamic of non-hostile interactions that has led many to believe that this is one of the weaker seasons of “The Ultimate Fighter”.

It’s finally time for the wild card picks, and Dana White shocks just about everyone when he announces that Javier Torres will fight Chuck O’Neil. The episode ends with the traditional preview of next week’s episode, and it looks like a good one: Len Bentley confronts Brock Lesnar, the wild card fight gets underway, and the Coaches Challenge returns and appears to be football-themed.

I definitely think this was one of the best episodes of the season, in fact, I think this episode should be considered the best episode of TUF 13 so far. It had a little bit of everything and a lot of action. I really enjoyed this week’s fights: not only did we get two of them, not only did both fights feature several minutes of entertaining action, but both fights ended in some pretty dramatic stoppages. Add in some drama with two of Team Lesnar’s best narrowly avoiding being put on the shelf, and the big shocker that was Lew Polley getting the axe, and you’ve got a very solid episode of “The Ultimate Fighter” that definitely puts Season 13 on an upswing.

And what about you, fans and friends? What did you think of this week’s episode?