The Ultimate Fighter 16, Episode 5: Lowering the bar on the 10-8 round

The recap of previous episodes reminds us that Nic Herron-Webb was kind of a jerk in the house. Really, you don’t mess with your housemates’ sleep. Mike Ricci in particular took offense.

Back in the house, Matt Secor decides to rub Julian Lane’s nose in his loss. Lane rolls with it for a bit but finally snaps, smashing a bottle and trying to get Secor to hit him. Lane’s teammates come in and calm him. Igor Araujo tells Secor to dial it down, which Secor doesn’t want to hear. Classic bully pretending he hasn’t done anything wrong.

Nelson’s team is still a little concerned about practicing only once a day. Colton Smith has an easy solution — you want a cardio workout? Run while you’re at the house!

Team Carwin has the fight pick. With the next pick … Shane Carwin … selects … zzzzzzzzzzz

What? I’m up! I’m awake! OK, it’s Nic Herron-Webb (remember the foreshadowing?) against Carwin’s Igor Araujo, who leans pretty far into Nic’s face. Igor says something about eating brains.

Bristol Marunde, sporting some nasty facial cuts from his bout with Lane, wants Igor to damage Nic’s mouth so he can’t talk.

Meet Igor Araujo — he’s Brazilian but is now at the Jackson camp in New Mexico. He’s a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, which should neutralize Nic’s strength there. And Igor’s father was a journalist! OK, we’re rooting for him now.

TUF vet Eliot Marshall comes in to work with Igor. To our surprise, Eliot knows a bit of Portuguese. Igor’s pretty happy to hear his home language.

Carwin tells us Igor is truly fighting for bread and milk. This is a good thing, apparently. And yet Carwin does pretty well fighting as a side job from his engineering career. During the next segment, Igor mentions bread and milk again.

About that next segment — Herron-Webb somehow gets Ricci’s bed on top of a gazebo in the backyard. Ricci tells Herron-Webb to go get it, but he has no leverage. He flips Herron-Webb’s hat off, at least, before going to retrieve his bed himself.

Meet Nic Herron-Webb — he’s 22 but has already created “nap-jitsu” and has a 3-year-old kid.

Igor does a tearful confession. He cries before going to sleep, thinking about his family. His son Renzo is turning 2. He says his tears make him stronger.

We get more and more pre-fight talk. Igor again talks about milk. Unlike Bristol, Igor doesn’t care about punishing Nic. Just wants to make him sleep and dream of Alaska and his bears.

Fight time: Steve Mazzagatti reffing. Igor quickly gets a takedown, then slips out of Nic’s active guard and advances to half-guard. Then to mount, though Nic nullifies it by clutching Igor’s torso. Nelson tells him, “You’ve gotta let go if you wanna win.” So Nic lets go and immediately gives up his back, taking punches to the side of the head. That’s not better. But Igor isn’t doing much, and Mazzagatti probably should’ve stood them up.

Round 2: It’s Nic on top. Igor tries to work up for a submission, but Nic maintains control and lands some sharp elbows. Then nothing. Still nothing. Still nothing. For the love of Pete, Steve Mazzagatti, will you please stand them up?! Oops .. Igor reverses. Nelson tells Nic not to fight off his back, which is too bad because he’s not bad at it. His punches force a scramble, and then Nic gets a good grip on a leglock. He can’t get it, but he reclaims top position. Nic tries some ground-and-pound as the round ends, and everyone expects a third round.

Which we don’t get, because two misguided judges think the first round was worthy of a 10-8. Um, no. Dana White visits Team Nelson to say that judging was as bad as it gets.

So it’s Igor by majority decision, and Carwin’s team is up 3-1. But Nelson still has his top two fighters.

Next week, we seem to have a bit more conflict among Team Nelson, and Carwin considers a tertiary career as a voice-over artist for self-hypnosis tapes.