Five minutes ago, I was watching the Family Ties episode in which Alex races to the train station to confess his love to Ellen, a scene made that much sweeter by the knowledge that the actors — Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan — are a couple to this day.
Now? Michael Bisping. This is like switching from the Sundays singing “Wild Horses” to Megadeth ranting about whatever those idiots rant about.
The house is splitting up into three groups. John Dodson and the other flyweight leprechaun dudes hang out in one spot. Dennis Bermudez, Johnny Bedford and a few others are studying the Bible. The others are in the “casino” group, playing cards.
Akira, the prankster who manages to rationalize his own hijinks while flipping out when someone returns the favor, shaves part of someone’s hair. That appears to be Bryan Caraway, who chases him across the house to threaten him. These lighter weight classes are FAST. (See SB Nation for more of Akira’s rationalizations. They’re actually quite amusing. He might be the most diabolical genius ever to appear on this show.)
Mayhem heard Bisping was planning a prank on his car. He arrives at the training center by bike.
Bisping and his coaches arrive in the parking lot with a massive skid, as if they’ve just won a NASCAR race and want to try a few donuts in celebration. Bisping and Tiki Ghosn peek into Team Mayhem’s dressing room for an idiotic chat to distract everyone. Spike has been building this prank up for weeks. Let’s see … after the break …
The ad break includes a terrific ad for UFC 139, which has a tremendous main card. Hendo-Shogun, Wandy-Cung Le, Faber-Bowles, Kampmann-Story. How deep is the card? Ryan Bader and Miguel Torres are in the prelims. (No, not against each other. Bader wold have a slight size advantage.)
When we return, Bisping blasts fire extinguishers into Mayhem’s dressing room. Bisping’s dressing room door is destroyed. Then a mariachi band walks through the hallway and appears outside. No further explanation would make any more sense of the situation.
Mayhem applauds, giving the credit to Tiki. Bedford, who can be found griping each week at mma.usatoday.com, gripes about it.
Bisping says they did the research and found the fire extinguishers aren’t toxic.
The whole thing seems to backfire on Bisping in a sense, though. The gym is trashed from the fire extinguisher crossfire, so Louis, Diego, Josh and Akira run sprints around the parking lot because they can’t train.
Back to the house — we don’t know much about Dennis, and it turns out we haven’t heard much because he’s not particularly coherent.
Back to the gym — Bisping gets a water-spraying ambush from a restroom. He doesn’t like water sprays. He kicks open the door. Surprise! It’s Akira! Who’s on his team!
Since Akira is supposed to be fighting Dennis, they put Akira through a brutal workout in which he starts out on his back and has to escape over and over while teammates take turns holding him down.
But Akira has enough energy to do another prank with Marcus Brimage’s help. Marcus jumps on Bisping’s back and rubs his sweaty jock strap in Bisping’s face. Marcus runs away, leaving Akira to deal with Bisping. The larger, fresher coach tosses Akira down and wraps the jock strap around Akira’s face. “I actually had to taste his salty balls,” Akira says.
This has gone to a weird place.
After the ad break, Bisping shows up at the house and calls Marcus out of the house. The result: A silly-string war.
Team Miller finally gets some screen time. Mayhem brought his dog again. More importantly, he brings Siyar Bahadurzada, a Golden Glory-trained fighter who just signed with the UFC and has impressive kickboxing skills. He apparently has some experience with Akira as well.
Back from the break, Akira serenades Dennis, rhyming “weigh-in” with “slaying.” He has a terrific voice. The UFC should hire him to do trash talk for reticent fighters.
Johnny says Akira-Dennis will be about a “three-minute beating.”
Dana thinks Akira bit off more than he can chew by calling out Dennis.
Bisping talks more trash to Mayhem, leading to this odd confessional quote from Mayhem: “I respect Michael Bisping. He’s a seasoned fighter. But I respect my father, and that didn’t stop me from kicking his ass.”
It’s already 10:47. This is shaping up to be a short fight. And the winner is in the final. He’ll get slaughtered by Diego Brandao, but still …
MMA Junkie always posts its recap at 10:55, so we may know the result before the broadcast of the fight starts.
We start at 10:52. Akira catches him early. And again. And he stuffs two Dennis takedown attempts. Dennis is lunging with punches. They trade big punches. Akira lands another big one. Dennis responds. Huge left drops Dennis, who recovers and shoots, then slams. He ends up with a guillotine. Akira taps just before he conks out. Herb Dean, ironically, was the ref when Akira possibly tapped in his last fight, and he’s here to stop this one.
In the recap, Marcus marvels that one of Akira’s punches spun Dennis around. Mayhem laments Dennis’s long-range takedown efforts but was happy that the takedown occurred in his own corner. He was able to ccoach Dennis like he was playing a video game.
Akira comes to and thinks the fight is still on. Bisping has to stop him, saying “guillotine, guillotine.”
A stunning fight, one that surely won’t hurt Akira’s UFC prospects despite the loss. And another fast-paced episode. Did you ever guess Mayhem would be less interested in pranks than Bisping?
Next week: Bisping-Mayhem coach’s challenge — air hockey! Dustin Pague eats a bug and then faces TJ Dillashaw.
Duresport.com 