Remember Zak Jensen? The guy who probably jerked off in the shower three weeks ago and didn’t clean it up? And then Wes Sims found the remains? Hilarious, right? Well, in deeply unhilarious news, it turns out that might not have been the first time Jensen left an awful mess in there. Last week, Jensen was named in a wrongful death suit filed by Elizabeth Gunderson Koll, who alleges that Jensen was negligent in the death of her son Josh, found dead in a Puerto Vallarta hotel bathroom in March after a struggle. Jensen, who was working as a bodyguard at the time, claims he acted first to defend a woman from an assault and then to defend himself when Gunderson continued to attack. It’s definitely worth noting that Mexican authorities found no wrongdoing on Jensen’s part, and concluded that the drunken Gunderson simply slipped in the bathroom and struck his head. What exactly he slipped on, however, remains open to conjecture.
But let’s all put that terrible affair behind us for the moment and lose ourselves in Team Rampage’s quest to win their fist match in the final week of first-round action. After a season of grinding disappointment, it’s all up to Marcus “Big Baby” Jones: truly enormous NFL veteran, Dungeons & Dragons stylist, gardener.
His opponent will be Mike Wessel. But not before last week’s Matt Mitrione slop-show decision win over Scott Junk is thoroughly dissected. “Second round, the guys were just gassed. It looked like two sloths fighting,” Brendan Schaub says with a look on his face that suggests he doesn’t ever want to see two sloths throw down for real if it’s going to be anything like that at all. “But I think that round could have gone either way.” Rampage agreed, and disagreed with the continued existence of the blue door nearest him, which he thunderously ruined with a solid low kick and an Ong-Bak style elbow as everyone looked on and heads were slowly shaken. But Doorgate, as the incident will probably forever be known, ultimately shows Dana White, Rashad, and Rampage at their most winning.
First, Dana: “You know what sucks about that? It shows everybody how cheap our f—ing doors are. It looks like egg crates. Listen, the last thing you want to be here on the set of The Ultimate Fighter is a door, ok? There’s no future being a door here.”
Then, Rashad: “Doors? Doors don’t hit back. Rampage is a clown, man. Why would you get mad and tear down a door when you haven’t shown that much interest in your team anyway? Why you tearing down a door? You get out what you put in. If you put in nothing, you get out nothing. So don’t be surprised. Yeah, it was a close fight, but he doesn’t need to tear down a door. Fool.”
And finally Rampage: “The door ain’t do anything to me. I want to apologize to the door but it’s too late, it’s gone. Door, if you can hear me, I won’t ever do it again.”
See? All those guys are awesome.
Mitrione returns to the house after his fight with Junk with what seems like a concussion, and heads straight to bed. Somebody wake him up every hour and ask him his address and phone number! I believe that is still the preferred post-concussion diagnostic: if you tell your mom (or whoever, I guess) the right answers, you don’t have to go to the hospital, but if you don’t, you will probably die. Sims wakes him up alright, but it’s to spray aerosol cans and alarm him. “My brain is f—-d up, dude,” is the woozy Mitrione’s monotone response. “Please stop.”
At the gym, we learn that Wessel is a disarmingly quick, heavy-handed striker they like to call “The White Tyson/The Juggernaut,” and that Jones is a blue belt in jiu-jitsu who laughs with goofy glee whenever he learns a new technique he likes. At the house, we learn that Wessel will write mean things on caricatures and that Jones will be offended when people write mean things about him on caricatures. Last week it was note-passing drama, and this week it’s rude cartoons? Next week: paper triangle fortune tellers . . . and the secrets they reveal! If it wasn’t for Rampage raising the level of discourse and civility around here by apologizing in all humility to Darrill Schoonover for teasing him so relentlessly in recent weeks, then you might start to think this was all just a bunch of junior high level . . . oh, wait, ok, actually Rampage just grabbed Schoonover’s titties. “I grabbed his titty,” he later recounted. “And it wasn’t pretty.”
On fight day, there’s some concern about taping Marcus’ enormous hands. If they use too much tape and gauze, there’s no way they’re going to fit inside those tight gloves. “That’s what she said,” Tiki notes. And he’s right: she did say that. She totally did. Hey Tiki, did she also say, “Alright, gentlemen, are you ready?” I ask because that is what referee Josh Rosenthal says as we get underway. Seconds in, Jones reverses a trip-takedown attempt, and forces Wessell to give up his back with an Americana armlock from half-mount. Marcus! Wessell turns into guard but Marcus grabs an armbar all of a sudden and that’s it! It’s all over! Marcus did it! Marcus has good hips! Why is this surprising? You don’t get picked in the first round of the NFL draft, and you don’t put together a thirteen-sack season and get paid literally millions of dollars, if you’re not an athlete – and you’re not an athlete if you don’t have good hips. And yet I am wowed by this. Rashad gets it right when it says, “Big Baby is no joke.” I’m with Dana, who can’t believe the arm didn’t break, and with Marcus, who is super excited about this fight: “EVERYBODY’S GONNA SEE THIS, MAN, YEAH!”
It’s time to pick the quarter-final matches. Consultations with the fighters on the subject of who they’d like to fight are notable for two reasons: (i) Rashad is merciless here, digging at Rampage at every opportunity, and (ii) Dana White really, really can’t stand Roy Nelson. Rather than simply say who he’d like to fight, Nelson busts out the full scouting report on everybody else on the show. Dana, visibly annoyed, tells Roy that his fight against Kimbo wasn’t the most exciting fight. Nelson defends his conservative strategy; Dana doesn’t care.
In the end, here’s what we’re looking at going forward:
Roy Nelson vs. Justin Wren
Brendan Schaub vs. Jon Madsen
James McSweeney vs. Matt Mitrione
Marcus Jones vs. Darrill Schoonover
That’s seven of Rashad’s fighters, and only one of Rampage’s, so Rashad is understandably looking for some of Team Rampage bodies to come out and train with his guys. Kimbo, for one, isn’t having any of it: “Can’t switch out like that. Gotta ride or die.” True, true. Rampage doesn’t like the idea any better than Kimbo does, and in the verbal sparring that follows, Rashad makes the fatal error of calling Rampage a sucker. “If I’m a sucker, treat me luck a sucker. Why don’t you come lick on me then?” There’s no doubt about it: this is a masterstroke, and Jackson laughs like the merriest of children to end the show.
And so the quarter-final matches are set. Or are they? Matt Mitrione’s brain might be broken! He’s off to the hospital? COULD THIS MEAN THE RETURN OF KIMBO SLICE? This recapper thinks it could!
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The Ultimate Fighter Season 10 Episode 8 Recap