THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER 11 EPISODE 7 REVIEW

Pretty average episode this week, I’d say. The fight wasn’t the most exciting thing ever, but was pretty decent just the same, and there really wasn’t much to the rest of the episode as well.

Nick Ring’s left knee has apparently gone through surgery a few times, and it’s been bothering him ever since his preliminary fight to get into the house. Right after his fight with Court McGee, he goes to see the cage-side doctor to get some advice, and after his next training session, his knee just gives out on him during a sparring session. Tito looks at it and is very dismayed as he’s had this type of injury before and knows that it’ll be a very rough time for Ring. He’ll look into getting something done about it as fast as possible.

The final match before the quarter final fights is between Team Liddel’s Joe Henle and Team Ortiz’s Seth Baczynski. The fight itself wasn’t the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen, but it was a good match just the same. Henle’s only been in the game a short time; he turned pro only six months prior to getting into the house, and only has a record of 3-0. Baczynski, on the other hand, despite having an 11-5 record, lost his preliminary match and originally failed to get into the house. The favorite, though, is Baczynski, due mostly to his experience.

The first round is pretty much an all – ground game affair. Henle takes Baczynski down very early and keeps him there, dominating throughout most of the round, but hardly doing any damage. All his submission attempts fail, and Baczynski even reverses him near the end of the round and tries to finish Henle with ground and pound. Still, though you’d have to give the first round to Henle, just on account of octagon control.

The second round very closely resembles the first one, but Henle seems terribly tired this time around and isn’t nearly as active. The fight goes to the ground early as well, but Henle actually fails in his takedown attempt and gets taken down by Baczynski instead. Because of Henle’s apparent lack of conditioning, Baczynski takes control of much of the round, but, again, fails to finish his opponent. He finishes very strong, though, with some ground and pound and a nearly successful rear naked choke, which pretty much guarantees him the round.

Sure, enough Henle gets the first round and Baczynski steals the second, resulting in a third round. The third is almost exactly the same as the second. Baczynski takes Henle down and controls him most of the round, but fails to finish him. Henle was even less active this time around; much of the time, he didn’t seem to be doing anything, really. Baczynski predictably gets the unanimous decision in the end.

Right after the fight, the wild card spot is announced, which determines which of the fighters who lost their matches can return to the competition. Two fighters are to be picked and will be battle it out for the chance to win it all. Dana announces that the fight will be between two Team Ortiz Fighters: Kyacey Uscola and Kris McCray.

I really like that Uscola is returning to the competition as I was very much impressed with his fight against Rich Attonito. McCray, on the other hand, didn’t really impress me, but then again, a lot of the other fighters who lost their matches didn’t impress me, either, so it doesn’t really affect me as much.

What makes me really happy, though, is that Dana announces that Court McGee will officially replace Rich Attonito in the competition on account of Rich’s injury. McGee was very exciting throughout his battle against Nick Ring, and I truly felt their fight should have gone to a third round instead of an immediate decision.

The next episode preview promises that the next episode will offer way more than this one did, what with two fights, the wild card fight, and the first quarter matchup, plus Dana White puts in another of his trademark surprise nightly visits to the fighters’ house. I’m all for it being more exciting the next time around, but I wish this season was more consistent with itself, with every episode being fairly well rounded and exciting, instead of alternating being “good” and “not so great” as it currently seems to be doing.

Check out my reviews of the other episodes of The Ultimate Fighter season 11 here!

JAKE GYLENHAAL'S PRINCE OF PERSIA WORKOUT

Times Online has a fascinating article on how movie stars transform their bodies to suit particular roles, but the most interesting thing about it is that it details Jake Gylenhaal’s current diet and fitness routine for his newest movie, “Prince of Persia”:

“5.30am Pre-workout snack: half a banana, some nuts and an espresso.

6am An hour-and-a-half cardio outdoors workout while wearing a 20lb flak jacket to simulate the weight of armour. Interval training - 10min uphill sprint, followed by abs exercises, eg, sit-ups, at the top of the hill. Repeat sequence five times, then a 10min run, followed by stretching exercises.


7.30am An egg-white omelette, a small protein shake and an isotonic drink to replenish salts lost during training.

Lunch Baked potato with tuna and salad.

6-7pm An hour of resistance training using cables to simulate sword fights, pull-ups, press-ups, abs exercises using weights; finish with stretching.

7-8pm: An hour-long deep tissue massage

Dinner: Soup and a protein shake

Snacks/supplements Two litres of water, protein bars, dark chocolate, supplements rich in omega-3, 6 and 9. No foods containing refined sugar, occasional glass of wine allowed."



Fascinating stuff. Some of you may be wondering what an “isotonic drink” is, though. Well, they’re basically sports drinks like Gatorade, but I believe that a homemade fruit shake is better since it serves the same purpose but delivers more vitamins and minerals. Read more about this in my article about keeping properly hydrated.

Also curious to see what that “hour of resistance training” specifically is? Well, Weight Loss & Training.com has an excellent article that simulates what specific exercises Gylenhaal would have done to get the body he has in the movie, complete with detailed pictures!

I’d also assume that the supplements would be taken at different, set times throughout the day as prescribed by Gylenhaal’s nutritionist (or team of), and that the snacks would be consumed throughout his training schedules. Please take note that not only did Gylenhaal perform the routines here on (what I assume is) pretty much a daily basis, he also regularly did stunt training such as horseback riding, sword fighting and so on, mostly under the burning sun, as the film is largely set in a dessert environment, burning up a tremendous amount of calories. The snacks would make up for the extremely lean diet he has described here.

If you want to try this out yourself, though, please be wary of the snacks since too much of those can be counterproductive of your calories losses. Energy replenishing though they may be, too much calories are still too much and will ruin your energy balance, which will thus make you fatter, instead of leaner.

I’d also like to caution against those uphill sprints because, despite the fact that they are indeed an excellent form of exercise, too much of them can cause too much strain on the joints and can result in injuries, especially if you plan on suiting up with armor like Jake did. Gylenhaal obviously has a team of experts to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t get injured and that nothing else goes wrong, as well as daily massages and such, which, I’m sure, not everybody has access to, unfortunately.

In any case, I personally feel that it’s a tremendous and effective fitness regimen if monitored closely and carefully. I also am personally very much hyped about this particular movie. I played the original game back when I was a kid, but didn’t play any of the more modern iterations, so I completely lost touch with the franchise. This movie could be a perfect reintroduction to it, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

Check out my other features on celebrity workouts here!

UFC 113 REVIEW PART 4, PLUS A LOOK AT UFC 114

This is the fourth and final review in a series that I have done about UFC 113. Check out the part one, where I write about Kimbo Slice vs. Matt Mitrione, part two, where I go in-depth about Josh Koscheck vs. Paul Daley, and part three, where I tackle the main event, Lyoto Machida vs. Mauricio Rua.

In this final installment of reviews concerning UFC 113, I will write about my thoughts concerning the rest of the matches that were shown on the Pay-per-view (PPV). I know it seems a bit unfair to write an individual article for three of the matches, then simply lump the remaining four into one piece, but, to be perfectly honest, except for one of the remaining fighters, I’m not much of a fan of any of them.

I don’t mean to say that I believe they’re all unskilled fighters that don’t deserve to be seen. It’s just that these fighters haven’t really done anything to truly impress me. They’re all great fighters that produce awesome matches a lot of the time, but compared to the others I wrote about, like Koscheck, Machida and Rua? They just don’t catch my eye in the same way.

Alright, the first fight I’m going to take a look at concerns that other fighter I hinted about that I’m actually a fan of: Marcus “The Irish Hand Grenade” Davis. He squares off against Jonathan Goulet.

I gotta say that I’m a big fan of Davis, really like his stand up game and loved the hell out of the war he went through with Dan Hardy at UFC 99, especially after all the smack talk that went on. That said, I’m really, really glad that he won this fight, as he had lost the last two he was in, first again Hardy, then again against Ben Saunders (who I’m also a really big fan of) at UFC 106. I really wouldn’t have liked it if he had lost this one and Dana cut him because of three straight losses (which happens quite often in the UFC), as I would really like to see him fight more in this organization.

Well, I get my wish and The Irish Hand Grenade drops Goulet during the second round and finishes him off with a bit of ground and pound. The fight itself was also very entertaining, what with much of it being a stand up war.

The next fight I’ll be delving into will be “Filthy” Tom Lawlor vs. Joe Doerksen. Despite Doerksen’s very impressive record, Lawlor was my favorite in this one because of his tenure during The Ultimate Fighter Season 8, which gave rise to his career in the UFC, with a very impressive win over CB Dollaway at UFC 100.

Unfortunately, Lawlor loses to Doerksen during the second round via Rear Naked Choke, which actually very much surprised me, since Lawlor was very close to finishing him during the first round. Lawlor rocked Doerksen a few times during the opening round, but Doerksen persevered and survived until the end, eventually earning him the win. Great job!

Oh, well, at least Lawlor wins for greatest weigh-in ever.

I really like Dana's "Korean Zombie" shirt in this shot:

 Really funny stuff; Joe Rogan even welcomes Lawlor back as Dan Severn!

Anyway, now we head into the first fight of the main card, featuring Alan Belcher vs. Patrick Cote. Now, I’m not much of a fan of Belcher’s but I gotta admit that I had him winning this fight the second I saw this fight finalized. Why? Ring rust. Cote hadn’t fought since that rather odd matchup against Anderson Silva during UFC 90, way back in October, 2008. He had major knee surgery after the incident, and I’m actually very surprised that he came back at all. Well, he surprised me there, but everything else was pretty predictable. To Cote’s credit, however, he looked pretty impressive during this match, staying active a lot, and hurting Belcher several times. He loses via Rear Naked Choke during the second round. I admire his heart for going back into the cage after all the major surgery, though, so, with the ring rust more or less gone, hopefully he comes back better than ever next time and maybe even eventually get back into top contender status.

Last, but not least is Sam “Hands of Stone” Stout and Jeremy “Lil’ Heathen” Stephens. Both of these guys are devastating strikers and pretty much guaranteed everyone an all out war, and guess what? It was. It was an excellent fight from both of these warriors, which was very close and back and forth all the way until the end. There was absolutely no quit in either of these men as both went the distance, with Stephens winning a very close split decision.

Well, that’s it. I really enjoyed this card very much, especially with all the surprises that I shared in my first three reviews. I’m very excited about UFC 114 and I’m sure to review it, what with some of my favorite fighters being featured there: Rampage and Rashad, sure, but also Bisping and Lil’ Nog (too bad Forrest had to back out because of an injury, that would have been an excellent matchup!). The preliminary card looks to be one of the most epic that I’ve seen in a while as well, what with Amir Sadollah vs. Don Hyung Kim, and Efrain Escudero vs. Dan Lauzon. Excellent fights that night, guaranteed!

Who do I favor, though? The main event’s going to be a tough one, and I like Rampage a lot more than Rashad, but I’ve honestly have to give it to Rashad on this one. Rampage is way more powerful than Rashad is, but I think Rashad’s much quicker and way more skilled. Rampage could surprise me, though, and clip Rashad, knocking him out. I’d be very happy if that does happen, because I’d really like to see a Rampage vs. Shogun matchup in the future, unless Randy beats him to it first.

For the rest of the matchups, I predict the ones I already listed, but for the televised prelims, I’d have to give it to Sadollah and Escudero. Again, though, anything can happen MMA, which makes it so fun to watch! Can’t wait!

UFC 113 REVIEW PART 3: MACHIDA VS. SHOGUN 2

This is the third in a series of reviews I'm doing for UFC 113. Check out part one where I take an in-depth look at Kimbo Slice vs. Matt Mitrione and part two where I tackle Josh Koscheck vs. Paul Daley.

The next fight I’m going to review is the main event of the evening: The Dragon vs. The Shogun.

Which is the greater force to be reckoned with? Last time around, the judges said that The Dragon was more powerful, but fans all over said that it was The Shogun. This time, things would be more decisive.

Like the first two matchups I reviewed, the main event revealed some surprises of its own. I predicted that Lyoto would once again win, but that match would still be extremely close, basically more or less a repeat of the last affair. I figured this would be the case since so little time had passed between the matches and that both fighters would still be fighting at their peak. Both warriors are extremely talented and athletic, with excellent camps to back them up. I figured if one camp would create a perfect a counter strategy with the previous fight in mind, the other camp would do exactly the same, cancelling each other out and resulting in basically the same deal.

But nothing could have been farther from the truth. The match was quick; extremely quick. And The Shogun slew The Dragon with 1: 25 left in the very first round. Rua drops Machida with a right hook and immediately capitalizes. He knocks him out via ground and pound and becomes the new, undisputed UFC Light Heavyweight Champion of the world.

Wow. Completely blew my mind, as my favored fighter was defeated so quickly and decisively. I’ve all respect for Rua, though. Like I mentioned, I thought this fight would still be very close, so it could have gone to either man if the chance arose. Well, Shogun was offered the chance and he grabbed as quickly and as aggressively as he could. Bravo, Shogun. Bravo.

UFC 113 REVIEW PART 2: KOSCHECK VS. DALEY

This is the second in a series of reviews I’m doing about UFC 113. Check out part one, where I take an in – depth look at Kimbo Slice vs. Matt Mitrione, and part two where I tackle the rematch between Lyoto Machida and Mauricio Rua.

The next fight I’m going to review is the co-main event featuring Josh Koscheck and Paul Daley. Many people are aggravated by this matchup because of a few things, the first being the so-called “phantom knee”. About 4 minutes into the first round, Daley delivers a knee to a downed Josh Koscheck. However, after reviewing the replay several times, it seems that the knee actually did not hit Koscheck at all. The referee, Dan Miragliotta, even officially returns the point he originally removed from Daley because of the incident.

Despite that, though, Koscheck was immediately reeling in pain after the knee “hit”. Color Commentator Joe Rogan initially suspected that Daley’s toe might have accidentally hit Koscheck’s eye, but further reviews of the replay video debunct even that. Speculations then immediately arise if Koscheck was simply hamming it up as a tactic to deduct a point away from his opponent. When confronted about the incident later on, Koscheck simply replies that he didn’t know what hit him, but that he was deeply in pain at the time.

The second source of aggravation was Koscheck’s game plan going into the fight. There was a legendary bout of smack talking between the fighters that heavily hyped their matchup, so fans naturally assumed that this would result in an all – out war of some sorts in the cage. Unfortunately, Koscheck betrays those expectations by playing it safe and mimicking Georges St-Pierre’s tactics against Dan Hardy.

In order to avoid Daley’s devastating striking prowess, Koscheck repeatedly takes the fight to the ground with his superior wrestling ability and dominates Daley in what many would call a “lay and pray” strategy (in which the superior wrestler among the two fighters would simply take down his opponent and lie on top of him until the bell rings. This strategy works despite being incredibly boring to watch because the judges consider it “octagon control” and gives points to the fighter).

Personally, I disagree with this, and on paper, is what I actually expected from Koscheck. People complain about UFC bouts all the time when they don’t result in stand up wars of some sort. Guess what? Half of mixed martial arts is a ground game component, and if you’re tremendously weak in half of the sport, you’re in trouble. Koscheck knew that Daley’s skills were one – sided in this way: incredible stand-up, and terribly mediocre ground game. Now, Koscheck’s stand-up isn’t anything to laugh about either. He has a great highlight reel of knockouts coming from punches and head kicks, but his wrestling is definitely his main strength. So, yes, again, if you match up these two on paper, this would definitely be the result.

What I’m always confused with is why people almost never look at the flipside of the coin. People always criticize GSP for this sort of strategy but almost never criticize his opponent, Dan Hardy, for working better to prevent this from happening. Yes, GSP is an extraordinarily talented athlete and wrestler, but he’s only human and there are ways around that. Chuck Liddell, for example, has used well trained wrestling abilities to consistently stay standing.

The third point of contention is the surprise ending of the match, where Daley delivers an illegal punch to Koscheck’s face after the final bell had rung. Joe Rogan comments that Daley should be in jail because he assaulted Josh Koscheck. When confronted by the press, Daley oddly responds that he didn’t hear the bell ring. Kind of hard to believe when Koscheck was already walking away from him and he had to clearly get his attention first before administering the blow. Dan Miragliotta immediately wrestles him to the other side of the cage to control him. Koscheck then goes on to win the match via an obvious unanimous decision.

Now, this is very similar to another ugly, recent incident in MMA: the Strikeforce brawl, in which two acts of violence after a main event fight take place which cats a dark shadow in the young sport. MMA is very difficult to promote in most areas because of its extremely aggressive nature. Dana White has worked for years to clean up its name and make it a worldwide phenomenon and he’s clearly on the right track, so when things of this nature occur in his own backyard, things are going to be decisive.

I personally think that this particular incident looks far worse than the Strikeforce debacle. This is because the Strikeforce scene looks like a staged event. Many viewers are actually used to such things because it’s quite common in professional wrestling. Daley’s actions, however, are clearly due to only extremely bad sportsmanship, and made me wince.

Commentator Mike Goldberg states that Daley should be immediately suspended for that, while Joe Rogan jokes that it was the only clean hit he landed in the whole fight. I do, however, think that the event was handled way better than Strikeforce did theirs and was cleaned up quicker and without controversy. See, this is where Dana White truly shines and is part of the reason how he has made this sport as successful as it is today. Love him or hate him, his extremely aggressive attitude towards decisions and conflicts gets the job done, and fast. Dana immediately cut Daley from the UFC stating that he didn’t care if he’s ever considered the pound for pound best fighter in the world; he’ll never fight for the UFC again. Period. No dancing around the issue with delays and interviews and board meetings or anything else that seems largely unprofessional. You confront an issue, and you immediately deal with it. And that’s what makes Dana White and the UFC great.

Another thing is that Dana White officially announced during the pre – fight press conference that the winner of the match will become a coach on the next season of The Ultimate Fighter opposite current Welterweight champion Georges “Rush St-Pierre, culminating in a championship fight. I am personally very excited to see GSP coach against Kos. I believe the vast differences between their personalities would make for a very interesting season, sort of like Bisping vs. Henderson on steroids, since I believe Kos talks smack way better and louder than “The Count”.

UFC 113 REVIEW PART 1: SLICE VS. MITRIONE

UFC 113: Machida vs. Shogun 2 was a very surprising affair for me. Not nearly as surprising as UFC 112 was, but was it as controversial? I’d personally say no, not by a long shot, but many would probably disagree. Regardless, it’s a card that was very exciting for me to watch, and left me very satisfied in the end.

 I will be splitting this review into several pieces since I want to review each fight that was shown on the Pay-per-view as in-depth as I can. Doing so will highlight each of my points more clearly and will be less tiresome to read, I believe, and which are some of the things I learned from my overlong review of UFC 112.

The first fight I’ll be reviewing will be between Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Fergusson and Matt “Meathead” Mitrione. Both fighters impressed me very much during their last outing on The Ultimate Fighter: The Heavyweights Finale, as each showed massive improvements to their game. Matt Mitrione defeated Ultimate Fighter rival Marcus Jones, but Kimbo impressed me even more by defeating longtime MMA veteran Houston Alexander. Despite being immediately cut from the UFC after the loss, Alexander is no joke and many wondered if Kimbo would be able to take him. Slice won the match and opened the door to a possibly long career in the UFC.



This fight, as well as the others on this particular review, surprised me very much, particularly because I had Kimbo winning it. Mitrione controls much of the first round with brutal leg kicks that would eventually lead him to victory. Kimbo counterattacks by bringing the fight to the ground as much as he can with his dominant wrestling prowess. Mitrione proves that he is no slouch on the ground, though, as he is able reverse positions and stand up when he wants to, as well as attempt several submissions.

The second round opens with more leg kicks, which Kimbo eventually succumbs to. He attempts to bring Mitrione down again, but his legs fail to give him the explosiveness required for his takedowns and slams, so he just falls to the ground. Mitrione quickly capitalizes and performs a lot of ground and pound on Kimbo’s face. Kimbo does absolutely nothing to intelligently defend himself, though, and the referee stops the match due to TKO with 36 seconds left in round two. Mitrione completely dominated Kimbo in this round.

Mitrione completely surprised me with this win. Not only did he show massive improvements in both his stand up and ground games, but he dominated Kimbo in much of the fight. Dana White, unfortunately, has officially cut Kimbo Slice from the UFC. Many fans have actually questioned this, as Slice was one of the draws for this card. Is it really so wise to immediately cut him after that? I personally think White had this planned for either fighter. Both of them are very inexperienced and are very new to the fight game. Hell, Mitrione was officially 1-0 before entering the octagon! I think the plan was to cut the loser and have him work his way back up to the UFC in one of the slower organizations if he can, while supporting the winner to see how far he can get, which is a pretty standard practice in the UFC.

The UFC has plenty of great fighters in their roster and managing all of them can be pretty taxing at times. Fans are actually complaining, for example, that top contender  Cain Velasquez, will have to wait until later this year in order to fight again, since he’s next in line for the belt, resulting in what looks to be a 10 – month gap in between fights. So, with the UFC already having a difficult time managing some of their top contenders’ slots, it’s easy to see that they should just cut out some of the ones at the bottom in order to ease things up a bit.

As a fan, though, I personally wanted to see Kimbo be given one more chance within the UFC. I think he has what it takes to make it in the big leagues, and hopefully, he doesn’t give up and works hard enough to make it back in.

Check out the second part of my UFC 113 reviews where I take an in-depth look at Josh Koscheck vs. Paul Daley, and the third part, where I tackle the rematch between Lyoto Machida and Mauricio Rua.

ROBERT DOWNEY JR'S IRON MAN 2 WORKOUT

US Magazine has a great article about how Robert Downey Jr. quickly bulked up for his role as Tony Stark in Iron Man 2. Downey apparently used very unconventional methods in order to gain over 20 pounds of muscle mass in less than a month's time:

"Instead of doing regular bench presses, we used a bamboo bar... and we would hang plates on rubber bands off the bar... so it was like trying to bench press a snake!" Bose explains. "It bounced all over the place."

Downey Jr. also pushed "a custom-built wheelbarrow that we modified with 600 to 700 lb. weight stacks" around an obstacle course.

"We went out and bought truck tires, and we used sledgehammers -- anywhere from, two 4-lb. sledgehammers in each hand, all the way up to a full 20-lb. sledgehammer -- and we were just beating tires with it. We used fire hoses that we filled with sand and water... and we'd drag and whip them to build the shoulder muscles and pecs back up."

They also juggled "weighted Indian clubs," hulled around kettle bells and even used a war machine, which Boyes explains is "like a rope with handles on it with a pulley -- you suspend yourself from it," says Bose.

I've never heard of the bamboo barbell with rubber bands, but the rest of those sound very much like Caveman Training, which many UFC fighters, including Sean Sherk and Brock Lesnar, currently utilize.

Read the rest of the article over at Yahoo.

Check out my other features on celebrity workouts here!

STREET FIGHTER LEGACY REVIEW

I’d like to take some time to give recognition to a recently released fan film about one of my favorite video games of all time, Street Fighter. The film is called Street Fighter Legacy, and is basically a 3-minute fight scene between rivals Ryu and Ken.







The exact description taken from its official Youtube page states:

“StreetFighter Legacy has been a labour of love and passion project for its creator, Joey Ansah, who not only conceived and pitched the project, but also co-directed, co-wrote and choreographed it, alongside cameo'ing in the film. Collaborating, creative partner and long time friend Christian Howard was part of the project from day one, co-writing the script and story elements, as well as further down the line, storyboarding the film, being assistant fight choreographer and most importantly playing Ken Masters.

Streetlight repped Australian Director Owen Trevor came onboard to co-direct the film. His experience and style carried forward from shooting on 3 series of the acclaimed 'Top Gear' have really been an asset to the project and given it a strong visual flair.”

I personally very much liked it because, outside of all the flaws that one may catch, I can feel that the people who made this truly believed and loved the material they were working on and, had this not been a fan – made only film and hade a much higher budget, all the limitations with the time, the special effects and so on, would pretty much be easily addressed.

Here is a short video on the costume designs in the film:



I find that the martial arts choreography is very decent and the actors have obviously put in plenty of effort. The first thing one would notice, of course, are the special moves. Again, this is an adaptation of a video game, so, of course, movements of such nature will exist in these sorts of things. Given the crew’s obvious limitations, these special moves are incorporated decently enough, padded with slow motion effects to give the audience a bit more time to appreciate them.

Another thing to notice is that the choreography is very linear. This, I think, is the flaw in the choreographer’s way of thinking. The game that the film is based on is largely 2D in nature. The characters can only move from left to right within a limited space. They cannot step to the side or work in a 3D space of any sort. The flaw is that they attempted to replicate this as exactly as they could, as revealed by their fight choreography video:


Now, I fully respect their intents on making the film as faithful to its source material as possible, but I believe that they should have limited to elements like the costume and set designs, the tone of the film, the motivation of the characters and so on. I personally feel that they should have taken much more liberty in the fight sequences and been a bit more dramatic with it, especially because of the extremely short time it’s given. Taking full advantage of the open space they had by making the characters sidestep, roll diagonally and adjust their positions from time to time, like a real fight might look, would have definitely added more variety to the visuals and made the whole thing plenty more interesting.

Regardless, I still very much enjoyed the film and, as a fan of Street Fighter, genuinely applaud the cast and crew for putting in tremendous time, effort and money by creating this labor of love and releasing it totally free on the internet for other fans to enjoy and talk about. Bravo.

THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER 11 EPISODE 6 REVIEW

We have a very exciting episode this week, which is great, since it more than makes up for the medicority that was the last one. There's a lot of things going on here that can keep viewers plenty excited.

The episode basically starts with Tito sitting his team down and addressing all the negativity going around, particularly with Kyacey Uscola’s stance that Tito’s training remains taxing even before a fighter has to enter the cage, so much so that they’re body’s still broken down before it has the chance to be a hundred percent before the fight. Tito addresses this by saying that, according to his observations, his training regimen works, since his fighters’ endurance, strength, speed, and so on, have all been increasing steadily for the past few weeks, and their skills are becoming sharper and sharper as well.

Tito chalks up all the negativity to the natural depression that fighters feel after they’ve lost, and with Chuck’s team leading in the game so far, Tito’s team definitely has their fair share. He tries his best to keep his team’s spirits up despite all this, but admits that it’s really very challenging.

The dodge ball coaches’ challenge was up next, and wasn’t nearly as exciting as I thought it would be. I mean, the idea by itself is pretty darn zany: Chuck Liddell vs. Tito Ortiz in a dodge ball deathmatch! Pretty insane, right? Well, not really. The segment zoomed by really quick and was more interested in Dana White narrating who won which round. Chuck, interestingly enough, sweeps Tito three to nothing, wins ten grand and each of his fighters wins a thousand bucks each. He dances around the stadium like he just won the championship belt back and leaves Tito with a depressed look on his face. Tito just can’t catch a break, huh?

The injured fighter, which was previewed last episode, was also revealed.

 James Hammortree was carried out on a stretcher following a training accident, where he was dropped badly on his back. He seemed to be in really horrible pain and, hopefully, the next episode will reveal that it’s not as bad as it seems. There’s nothing worse than a severe back injury, after all.

 The next fight was then announced, and was between Court McGee and Nick Ring.

 The fight itself was very good because it was always back and forth, and was extremely close until the end. Both fighters’ stand up games were very good and, mopst of the time, seemed to neutralize each other. The fight went to the ground during the last few minutes of the first round, though, and Ring completely dominates McGee with his control and various submission attempts, though is unable to finish. Clearly, though, this round went to Ring.

The second round begins the same, with both fighters showing great stand up despite looking noticeably tired. The entire round was on the feet, but I personally thought that McGee was more active this time around, and had better conditioning. He looked to be the more active of the two fighters most of the round. I therefore gave this round to McGee and eagerly anticipated a third round.

Unfortunately, though, to Chuck’s dismay, the fight ends right there with a judges’ majority decision for Nick Ring. One of the judges scored the fight as a draw at the end of the second round like I did, but the other two thought Ring won both rounds. Even Dana White thought that McGee won the second round. Chuck becomes enraged, tries to pin the loss on Dana White, and storms back to the dressing room.

The preview, however, shows that Ring might also be out of the competition because of an injury aggravated during the fight. The last two fighters, Joseph Henle and Seth Baczynski, will also finally meet in the cage. Like I indicated at the top of my reviewer, I very much liked this episode and can't wait for the next!

Check out my reviews of the other episodes of The Ultimate Fighter season 11 here!