The fights to get in the house are done, and now we are left with the top 16 fighters to be broken up into teams. Michael Bisping wins the coin toss and ops to pick the first fighter, leaving Mayhem with the first fight pick. For bantamweights Bisping chooses Louis Gaudinot, T.J. Dillashaw, John Albert and Josh Ferguson leaving Mayhem with John Dodson, Johnny Bedford, Dustin Pague, Roland Delorme. For featherweights Bisping takes Diego Brandao, Akira Corassani, Marcus Brimage, Stephen Bass and Mayhem takes Dennis Bermudez, Bryan Caraway, Dustin Neace, Steven Siler.
The first fight pick that Mayhem makes is Bryan Caraway versus Marus Brimage (For more about Marcus Brimage, check out this link at MMAsucka.com. We are proud to have him as the MMA Sucka TUF 14 in house correspondent!).
It still seems to baffle me, how often the TUF coaches forget the importance of making the first fight pick, especially after 14 seasons! Its great to get the top prospect, but aside from Mac Danzig and Roy Nelson, who were in my opinion over qualified to be on TUF, the top prospect rarely wins the season. The old adage of “Styles make fights” certainly has a huge impact on the outcome of each season, when you can play the odds in your favor by pairing your best ground fighters against their worse. Keeping the fight picks also gives your team the mental edge as you can have more time preparing for upcoming fights and keep your opponents in the dark until the fight picks.
Not much chaos in the house this episode aside from the massive celebratory food spread they showed. (side note: Did anyone else admire the beautiful kitchen that the fighters had at their disposal? I want an indoor grill too!) I found the most interesting part of the house this episode was the weight cut that Marcus Brimage had to do. A 12lbs doesn’t seem to be too bad, especially from my own heavyweight point of view, but for a featherweight, that is about 8% of your body weight. If you have never cut weight, do the math. 1 liter of water weighs approximately 2lbs. So to cut 12lbs of water weight you need to SWEAT 6 liters of water out of your body. That’s about a big gallon jug and a half of water, and in Brimage’s situation he needed to do it over night. To Brimage and his coaches’ credit, he made weight, and put up a decent performance.
The first strike of the prank war this season was done by team Mayhem, and it was pretty tasteful. No one was hurt, or personally attacked, and it was still mischievous and stupid funny. They filled up the Team Bisping locker room with tires, up to the point the door to the locker room was unable to be opened and the only way they could get in was to break down the door. Of course, Bisping and company was not impressed, but lets see what they do to fire back next episode.
So far this season, I can’t complain at all about the fights. They all have been exciting as promised by Dana White, and this first in house elimination fight was no exception. The first round was spent on the ground after Bryan Caraway did a diving double leg to take Marcus Brimage to the ground. Caraway took back mount and had more than half the round to secure a rear naked choke. Brimage did a text book job in fighting off and Caraway’s hands. Surprisingly, although Caraway had Brimage’s back, Brimage did the most damage in the round with his explosive power he threw behind him to Caraway’s face. Caraway was cut and bleeding at the end of the round. The second round started with the two fighters brawling, as Brimage stopped several take down attempts, and made Caraway pay with punches as they disengaged. Unfortunately for Brimage, Caraway eventually was able to take him down, and secure a rear naked choke that he had been wanting all first round.
Bryan Caraway def. Marcus Brimage by submission (rear-naked choke) at 2:55 of round 2.
