The Ultimate Fighter 13: Episode 3 Recap & Results

Previously on the Ultimate Fighter: Keon Caldwell quits and goes home to be with his daughter, thereby ensuring that he’ll never be able to support her through fighting. Chris Cope wins a hard-fought decision over Javier Torres, and Brock Lesnar talks about making salads out of chicken turds.

It’s time for a Team Lesnar training session, and the team apparently has an issue with Brock calling them chicken shit. I guess it’s possible that none of these fighters grew up on a farm or in the south, because if they had, they’d know that the expression isn’t meant as a literal insult. Brock says he sees Len’s attitude getting worse every day, and Erik Paulson tells Brock it’s because of the chicken shit comment.

Brock decides to hold a team meeting to clarify his point with the team. He says that before the season started, they were just chicken shit, but now they’re chicken salads. Okay, now I’m confused as well. Brock then goes on to give a motivational speech consisting entirely of cliches. He smiles for the camera and says “chicken salad, baby.” I love this guy so much sometimes and he should totally have his own line of salads.

Team Dos Santos hits the gym. They’re worried about the replacement for Keon because they have a good team dynamic. The new guy arrives and it’s a much younger version of Randy Couture. No, seriously. This guy looks like Randy Couture in his 20’s. He tells the team that he gets stopped in casinos all the time by autograph seekers looking to get Randy’s signature.

Coach Lew is frustrated that the coaches aren’t putting guys in the right position to win. He’s decided that he wants to start training the guys the way he wants to train them because Junior is being way too nice. He proceeds to run them through training and sounds like a high school coach while doing it. Shamar suffers a nasty cut while going through training, and the guys aren’t happy about overtraining. Junior doesn’t like saying bad things to fighters and says he brought in Lew because he’s very good at wrestling.

Fight announcement: Brock chooses Len to take on Ryan. This sucks because I actually picked these guys to go to the finals before the season started. I suppose they could still make it there with the wild card, but for now, one of these guys is being eliminated.

Back at the house, Chris is hanging out…with the opposing team. His team is sick and tired of Chris and they don’t feel like they can trust him. Len says every time Chris talks, he annoys him. Chuck says that Chris is the investigator. I’m pretty sure he meant instigator. Regardless, Chris is shown carefully observing Len’s practice to give off the impression that he’s spying for the other team, so perhaps they Chuck did, in fact, mean instigator.

Len pulls Brock aside and tells him that Chris has been spending a lot of time with the other team. He asks Brock to tell him to keep his mouth shut. Brock tells Len to just worry about fighting. He says they picked this fight because, no matter what, they feel he can beat him. He tells Len not to get caught up in the other stuff. I gotta say, Brock is coming off very likable this season.

Team Dos Santos arrives at the gym for a late-night session. One of the coaches complains to Junior that Lew is making the guys go too hard, so Junior decides enough is enough. He pulls Lew into the office and tells him that he’s pushing too hard. He says Lew is here because he’s a wrestling coach, but that he is the coach of the team. He basically puts Lew in his place. They fistbump, which means everything is okay.

Ryan is struggling with his weight. He’s weighing 180 the night before the fight, but Lew says that’s no problem. They go through the salt bath process (Albolene, epsom salt and green rubbing alcohol) the next morning and Ryan starts sweating like crazy. I’ve seen several UFC fighters that use this method and it almost always works. He gives the picture of his daughter to Junior so that they can have it in his corner.

It’s time for weigh-ins, made all the more dramatic by the difficulties that Ryan endured in cutting weight. Len weighs in at 170. Ryan gingerly steps on the scale, but everything is fine since he comes in at 170.

Brock tells Len he won’t be there to witness his fight. He’s had some personal issues come up that he has to take care of. They REALLY wanted Brock to coach this season, because I can’t imagine them giving any other coach permission to just leave like this. I mean, he comes back, but still. And then we get a glimpse of the old Brock Lesnar we know and love when he tells the camera that everybody knows his personal life comes first before smiling smugly and walking away.

It’s fight day. Brock tells Len via the iPhone that he’ll be thinking about him every second. Here we go.