CARL REVIEWS: THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER 32, EPISODE 4

A rescheduled rematch and words in the dark.

EPISODE 4: PUTTING EVERYONE ON NOTICE

It's rematch time. I guess. Actually, is it? Is it a rematch if the fight never started, or is it just Match?

PREVIOUSLY ON THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER: Robert and Giannis hugged, Team Shevchenko's Nathan Fletcher revealed his hair was once even worse and then he got wrestled to death by Team Grasso's Kaan Ofli.

CURRENT STANDINGS: GRASSO 2, SHEVCHENKO 1

We open on multiple men in a hot tub, who are watching on as Kaan and Nathan continue the show's tradition of hugging and assuring one another there's no bad blood between them, and again, this is a pleasant revelation after so many seasons of angry drunk people who cannot handle their feelings. They compare notes on the fight, Nathan voices his impressed frustrations about how goddamn hard it was to get Kaan off of him, and they both admit they had told their coaches they wanted to fight each other out of the feeling the other was their best challenge on the show's roster, which is hopefully a little comforting given Fletcher got picked five slots later. Emotional health! What a concept.

Back in the gym, Robert Valentin gets Coach Alexa Grasso's blessing to aid in the coaching and training for everyone else on their team. He starts leading drills, holding pads and demonstrating grappling techniques, and once again, this is exactly the kind of thing that would have led to a dickwaving story arc about angry men chafing under assumed authority twenty seasons ago, and now all it gets is a few seconds of fighters saying 'sure, it's awesome' to whatever closet confessional camera they're using. It's actually really awkward, because even though the purpose of the ring-lighting rig is to create an optimal face-to-face image they will, every once in awhile, inexplicably show one of the interview pieces from a side angle that just makes it look like the fighters are baring their souls to a giant ring of toilet paper in a black void.

Omran Chaaban gets the first spotlight. He talks about how good his kicks are and how much he likes striking, then immediately transitions into discussing how he's actually a grappler and people just think he's a striker, because he is the lion, but he is also the dinosaur. Omran gets the requisite highlight reel of beating people up in Cage Warriors and UAE Warriors, and he admits he had offers from numerous promotions but ignored all of them because all he cared about was the UFC, and I am struck by the non-zero chance that he turned down a decent contract from KSW to be in the TUF house instead.

We get another segment about Omran's faith and how important it is to him, which prompts Nathan Fletcher to ask if he feels weird about fighting another Muslim, and Omran's response is a Nate Diaz tribute act:

"Like, be honest with you, bro, for me, fighting is like, you know, I think I'm great at it. So, it's like, I feel it's just a fight, man. We're in the cage, it's my job. As I say, you don't have to be mad angry or something, just, like, man, we got a fight. If you are skilled, good condition, good fighter, you're gonna win. Simple!"

Having not really touched on Omran's personal life at all, it's Shamidkhan's turn in the Interview Void, and--stop me if you've heard this before--he has a wife and son he loves very much, and their relationship motivates him to fight and succeed. He comes from Dagestan, it's small and everyone knows each other, and he leaves it to finish his training camps in New Jersey, the Dagestan of America.

Shamidkhan does his work at the K-Dojo with Murat Keshtov, who helped train a number of Russian standouts like Khabib Nuramgomedov and Adlan Amagov, and we spend almost as much of the segment on training b-roll as we do on Murat's homemade khachapuri, which is sensible and correct because khachapuri is fucking delicious.

Shamidkhan's training starts with Valentina going over tape on Omran's last fight with him as they stop and analyze Omran's strengths, weaknesses and potential giveaways, which is legitimately fascinating shit for a nerd like me and I sure do wish they'd focus more on that rather than immediately switching to footage of Shamid very gently hitting pads. They're worried about Omran's striking and his opportunistic submission game, and shockingly, the Dagestani fighter is planning to take his opponent down and hit him a lot.

Back at the TUF house again, the shirtless men are back in the hot tub again, and Omran is harshing the tub party buzz by talking about how when he was ten his father abruptly died in his sleep and his family fell apart for a year. Hilariously, the show presents this in one single, 45-second segment and then moves on from it before anyone can say anything in response, so the reaction of everyone around him is summarized only by this picture, which I am submitting to art galleries under the name Portrait Of A Man Who Just Kind Of Wanted To Relax In The Hot Tub With His Buddies:

We instead have to go to Omran's home video from Dublin, Ireland, and I immediately appreciate him just for fighting out of Dublin and not joining up with SBG. That said, this segment has essentially nothing in it. He trains in Dublin. Here is his coach. His teeth are unpleasant. The end.

In what is most definitely not in any way a sponsored advertisement, Valentina Shevchenko takes her team out on a field trip to go hang out at the Circa casino, which she says she does every time she wins a fight. The team meets the CEO of the casino, and then they walk around the casino's pool lounge, and then they eat cheeseburgers. Multiple members of the team talk about how amazing and inspiring it was to see what the life and spoils of a champion are really like, and I am looking around to see if someone is visible at the corner of the screen holding them at gunpoint and forcing them to effusively praise the incredible experience of walking around a casino hotel and eating a cheeseburger. Like, my friends, you could do that any time you want. You could do that now. You could order a toy UFC belt off UFC Store Dot Com and wear it while you go to Circus Circus. I know this is only The Ultimate Fighter, but I beg of you, dream bigger.

Now it's time for another not-an-ad, only this time it's for the UFC's performance institute, where the fighters get to go into hot and cold pools and get massages. Alexa Grasso does not corner her fighters, but she does use a massage gun on their shoulders, and that's just as good. We do, however, get our first touch of the overarching story of this season as, four episodes in, we finally talk to Alexa about the experience of beating Valentina Shevchenko, considered by most to be the best Women's Flyweight of all time, as a huge underdog, and--try to hold onto your pants, because we're about to hit the drama at full speed--Alexa respects her deeply and was honored by the opportunity and has nothing bad to say.

Weigh-ins! Everyone is on weight and absolutely nothing happens. It occurs to me that one of the biggest sources of drama and interest in previous seasons was the massive physical struggle to make weight, and we have not seen a single second about weight cutting so far. Maybe there's no drama to mine, or maybe the UFC doesn't really want to show you fighters dehydrating themselves to death anymore. Who knows, who cares, it's Fight Day, and you know what that means, baby.

we got it, it's over
you don't wanna go to war with a soldier
move over, we comin
let em know that the home team winnin

There are more lyrics, but the fighters are talking over them. Goddammit, man, don't you know what the people really came to see? I am struck by the way every fighter has two sets of interview footage they air before the fights: One in which they're talking about their family and their team and what victory means to them and one in which they are much less animatedly repeating extremely similar phrases about how important it is to represent their country and how they're definitely taking this Finland vs Russia fight very seriously. Poor guys.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Omran Chaaban (6-1, Team Grasso) vs Shamidkhan Magomedov (8-1, Team Shevchenko)

Once again, reach is the big deal here, with Omran swinging 79" compared to Shamidkhan's 72". The fight's starting with 15 minutes left in the episode, so I'm guessing we're getting two rounds out of it.

ROUND ONE

Omran comes out pumping the jab to keep Shamidkhan off of him, and within twenty seconds Shamid has shot a double, put him down and scrambled into the backpack. Omran manages to lift away and force the fight back to the feet, but twenty seconds later he's defending takedowns and stuck in the clinch again. Omran pays tribute to this season's women's mixed martial arts theme by trying to get out of a bad grappling position with a head-and-arm throw only to whiff it entirely and get stuck in back control. Halfway through the round Shamidkhan has successfully suffocated Omran against the cage, but he hasn't landed anything other than knees to the thigh. He gets up into the backpack again and forces Omran to carry him and worry about the rear naked choke, but Omran pitches forward and tries to shake him off, so Magomedov settles for punching him in the head. Omran's corner is giving him good advice about trying to turn the clinch over and escape, but he can't get it and just winds up stuck on the cage desperately defending takedowns while intermittently getting punched in the mouth. Omran tries to jump the guillotine with thirty seconds left and immediately pays for it by being slammed on his ass, and the round ends with Shamidkhan on top of him.

Well, that round went pretty much as expected. Shamidkhan dominated the grappling and Omran accomplished nothing. Once again Alexa is not in the corner, but Robert Valentin is, which continues to be weird. Valentin tells Omran to use his range and put his hand in Shamidkhan's face to keep him from being able to focus on the takedown, then land the knee when he comes in.

ROUND TWO

Omran tries to take the center of the cage this time, and he whiffs on a headkick and a few punches before winding up right back against the cage. He does, however, land that knee Valentin was looking for as Shamidkhan shoots on him, and he follows up by desperately stabbing him in the side of the head with elbows while he tries for the takedown, but the stoppage doesn't materialize and, once again, he is stuck against the fence with Shamidkhan glued to his back. Shamidkhan makes the mistake this time, dragging Omran to the ground in an attempt to take his back, but he doesn't have it and Omran sweeps up and straight into half-guard, which he holds for roughly 2/3 of a second before Shamidkhan rolls directly into a kneebar. It's close, but we get a picture-in-picture of Dana White saying "oh, he's got it, he ain't getting out of that motherfucker," and as anyone who's ever watched the sport knows, color commentary talking about the tightness of a submission means it is coming off within seconds. Omran, through a combination of pushing with his leg and elbowing Shamidkhan in the ass, manages to make enough space to survive, and that means Omran is on top of him with all the time in the world to punch him. Shamidkhan gives up his back, Omran begins pouring on the punches, and with two minutes and change left he dives on an anaconda choke. Shamidkhan is fighting it and making space, but he can't get out of the position and Omran keeps hiking his body closer and closer, and soon, Shamidkhan is unconscious.

Omran Chaaban wins by submission. Shamidkhan is confused and has to be filled in on the events of the last forty-five seconds of his life, which is always the best part of getting choked out.

Omran is very proud of himself and I cannot get over the way that his adopted Irish accent comes out when he gets excitedly braggadocious. Shamidkhan is quietly sad, and his coach tells him he blew too much energy in the first round. Thanks, coach.

Dana opines on the 3-1 blowout Team Grasso has going and how, with the first round half over, Valentina needs to turn it around. Our next fight is at Featherweight and she picks her #6 Zygimantas Ramaska against Grasso's #9 pick, Bekhzod Usmonov. Dana promises a knock-down, drag-out brawl and I think of the sea.

NEXT TIME ON THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER: Literally nothing else. Highlights of this pre-taped fight as the voiceover calls it ONE OF THE MOST ACTION PACKED FIGHTS IN ULTIMATE FIGHTER HISTORY. Get excited. Get excited...for The Ultimate Fighter.