The Ultimate Fighter: Team Lesnar vs. Team dos Santos has officially emerged from what is traditionally the reality-television portion of its season with surprisingly little reality-television fare.
For the strict MMA purist at heart, that’s great news.
Less boorish nonsense in the house and gym means more blood, sweat and tears inside the cage. Of course, if you’re a strict purist, what the hell are you doing watching the 13th season of TUF?
This is the UFC’s offering to the brave new pop culture world and it’s as much about the show outside of the Octagon as it is about the go inside it. From the non-purist perspective, it’s been a tremendous letdown.
With arguably the sport’s biggest star attached, in Brock Lesnar, we were supposed to be treated to a must-see phenomenon similar to the Forrest Griffin-Stephan Bonnar collision that thrust TUF into the mainstream. Instead, we’ve had weeks of bedroom-eye promos that got the pulse racing, only to be disappointed with a TUF peck on the cheek and a lonely drive home, as the flirtations have gone unfulfilled.
Oh well.
The second round of fights begins tonight, and that means the reality-television overtones usually become muted as the focus shifts and the last men standing get whittled down. That means more scrapping and less yapping as that six-figure contract on the horizon gets closer and closer.
So maybe the window for salacious scandal has closed, but the one for legitimate tussles just opened wider.
Check back at the top of the hour for reactions to this week’s action.
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