(Wow, Miller Lite *and* NOS Energy drinks? Am I in heaven?? / Video via TheUltimateFighterFX)
When was the last time we’ve seen an episode of The Ultimate Fighter that didn’t feature a fight? Has this not happened since Season 3 episode 6, when Noah Inhofer left the house over a letter from his jealous girlfriend? (TUF armchair-historians, please feel free to correct me in the comments section.)
The mood was light in the beginning of last night’s episode of TUF 18, with Team Rousey enjoying a backyard BBQ and male strippers. And then, the moment that maybe a few of you have been waiting for: The Coaches’ Challenge. The game is rock climbing, with a $10,000 cash-stack awarded to the winning coach and an additional $1,500 for every member of her team. Ronda out-hustles Miesha at the top of the wall and yells “FUCK YOU BITCH!” (“I just like Miesha being in the habit of always getting beaten by me,” she says later.)
But the good times could only last so long. Team Rousey teammates Anthony Gutierrez and David Grant start cutting weight for their semi-final showdown, and Gutierrez’s casual approach to his diet is coming back to haunt him. On fight day, he wakes up at 145 pounds, a full weight class over where he’s supposed to be. Four hours later, he hits the scales at 140.
Gutierrez is given one more hour to shed four pounds, and he gets back in the sauna. It ain’t happening. Though Ronda urges him not to quit, Gutierrez says he can’t cut any more weight, and that’s that. Keep in mind that Gutierrez earned a free pass to the semi-finals because Cody Bollinger missed weight in the quarterfinals, meaning that Gutierrez is the first fighter in TUF history to be eliminated from the semi-final round without ever fighting in the house. Quite an achievement.
After the botched weight-cut, Manny Gamburyan gives Anthony an earful. And then Dana White kicks him out. And then David Grant cries.
Later, a shaken Ronda Rousey decides she’s going to cut to 135 pounds herself, as a weird, self-flagellating show of support/inspiration for her team. Dana explains that the Gutierrez situation is not her fault and he simply lacked that thing that makes her a fighter. “This competition weeds out the fuckin’ weak,” Dana says.
Ronda reportedly made the cut anyway. On next week’s episode, the last semi-final match goes down with Team Tate’s Raquel Pennington facing Team Rousey’s Jessica Rakoczy; the winner of that fight will face Julianna Pena for all the marbles at the TUF 18 Finale.
See also: Gutierrez speaks out after TUF weight-cut disaster