CARL REVIEWS: THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER 32, EPISODE 6

Where everything is what you expect it to be.

EPISODE 6: EVERYTHING IN MY POWER

As in, "I will do Everything In My Power to not give up on this silly, lamentable choice I have made."

PREVIOUSLY ON THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER: It was unanimously agreed no one cared enough about The Ultimate Fighter to be bothered by mutual weight misses, a dog hated children, and Zygimantas Ramaska won a pretty okay fight.

CURRENT STANDINGS: GRASSO 3, SHEVCHENKO 2

You can tell the UFC has already pencilled Robert Valentin as a star for the reason, because this is the third time they've done a 'previously on The Ultimate Fighter' episode stinger that showcased his victory even though it was four weeks ago. Bekhzod Usmonov and Zygimantas Ramaska return from the hospital together with a package of cupcakes and applause from everyone in the house for their amazing fight. (It was fine! It was fine. Jesus.) Having already spent half of the episode preview recapping and highlighting the fight, they recap and highlight the fight again, because we have time to fill and the b-roll supplies have already been exhausted.

The house is taking the afternoon off from training to watch a UFC Fight Night in their living room, which is fucking hilarious, because this show was largely shot in March and there were two back-to-back fight cards at the Apex, which is where this show is produced, and rather than actually going to the goddamn thing and making a fun episode of the process, they keep them confined to the house. Team Shevchenko's Edwin Cooper Jr. ruins everyone's fun time watching Payton Talbott vs Cameron Saaiman by ignoring Robert Valentin's abrupt order to keep quiet while the television is on in favor of talking about how he is Good At Fighting, and the house quickly deduces that he is drunk and may, in fact, be drunk all of the time.

It is so thoroughly on the nose that the first time we have any actual character moment in the TUF house worth making part of an episode it's because someone cracked into the house's unlimited alcohol supply. The next day at training, Ryan Loder's preparation for this episode's fight is interrupted when Cooper elbows him in the face without a pad on. Loder is furious about possibly being cut, Cooper's peacemaking is not accepted, Loder turns it into an argument, and Valentina Shevchenko comes in to separate them and remind them that they are martial artists and wasting their energy fighting each other. She also immediately blows the show's attempt to make Cooper seem like a drunken villain by reminding Loder that he apologized to him immediately and repeatedly, which they did not, in fact, air, because that would get in the way of the drama. Loder apologizes, the two hug, the beef is squashed, and we return to the top priority of the show: Dana White doing monologues about THE PRESSURE COOKER OF THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER.

This is where we are now. This show used to have people assaulting each other and peeing on each other and having drunken breakdowns so bad they resulted in arrest, and now the big example of the show's drama is a slightly heated disagreement that both men immediately apologized for. Hell, when we get back to the house Bekhzod goes out of his way to gently take Cooper aside so as not to embarrass him and talk to him about drinking a little too much. We have come so far, but the show doesn't actually know what to use to fill the void where horrible drunken drama used to be.

As if hearing me, we're off to Tom Theocharis for his turn on the home-movies rotation. He's from Toronto! He kicked a man in the head in a fight once! He likes to stand and bang and one of his fights appears to have taken place in a cage whose floor was made out of those interlocking puzzle mats you see at the 24-Hour Fitness! Robert thinks Tom is the most powerful striker in the house, but Alexa thinks he has trouble keeping himself motivated and needs to be pushed into staying active.

Ryan Loder, meanwhile, talks about how as a wrestling coach he found himself working with UFC guys, beating them and being entranced by the idea of the big money they earned, which for anyone who knows anything about the average UFC fighter's pay is an almost tragically funny sentence. He has a family, he has a girlfriend, he's a Sacramento boy and as any good northern Californian does he spends too much time snowboarding and wakeboarding. He's been wrestling since the fourth grade and overcame dyslexia to get a wrestling scholarship for Northern Iowa, and in the wake of the pandemic he wound up working with Urijah Faber and getting into amateur mixed martial arts, and here we are. There's almost a kernel of a story arc here with Loder's desire to help other kids with learning disabilities, but they shy away from it as soon as they introduce it, as with all good things.

Team Shevchenko is at Lake Mead, where they are on a boat. They talk about the majesty of aquatic nature while looking at, uh, the Hoover Dam, and this entire segment is so pointless that I think about Fallout New Vegas the entire time. The team agrees this was peaceful and wonderful and exactly what they needed, and I swear, I just want one person on this show to dislike anything, ever. Just once.

We are back at the house, where Tom Theocharis is showing off the tattoo he got of his girlfriend Sam, who died after randomly falling during a trip. This is not elucidated on at all, and we immediately and awkwardly transition to Tom's home video, which opens with his explaining how he will complain to his mother if there is no food left in the fridge. It is only when looking at Tom's big regional championship belt that we go to home video of his girlfriend from 2021, and from the sound of it the fall that killed her may have come because she was texting, which is a special kind of awful. Tom turned to his friend, former TUF champion and equally tragically departed Elias Theodorou for aid, and his passing from cancer very abruptly came just months afterward. So, y'know, you train through it. He says training and not giving up helped him cope with grief and depression, and having been there, I do not have a single cross word to say.

Valentina likes Ryan's power but wants him to worry more about movement and not getting hit in the head. Ryan Loder fight footage abruptly interrupts this and, shockingly, his style centers around wrestling people and elbowing them repeatedly in the face. As we go through yet another set of training b-roll, I cannot help noticing we're only now getting to the weigh-ins and there's less than ten minutes left in the episode. Weight is made without incident, everyone repeats everything they already said about Tom being a big puncher and Loder being a big wrestler, Robert Valentin gets yet another spotlight to talk about animal warrior spirit, and I wonder if this is what Hell is like.

The weigh-ins have come and gone, it is fight day, everyone walks to the building, and the lyrics for this week's walkups start with 'shake 'em up shake 'em up shake 'em up' and I was wrong: This is the Hell. When I tricked myself into doing this idiot project I felt hopeful that there would still be something inside of it, but every time they come even close to a humanizing moment or dramatic plot point or point of interest in the training process they retreat from it as quickly as they possibly can and bury the memory of anything engaging happening in another flood of b-roll and I think it's only now dawning on me that there are four more weeks of this to come. And all I am left with is this:

i sacrifice, show you i'm a dog
they know i'm an animal, watch how i evolve

Holding onto this lyrics gimmick is my coward's way out of embracing the void. I cling to it with what's left of my fingernails that it might save me from knowing that this is nothing and I am wasting my life on the worst mixed martial arts show on the planet*.

_{*not involving Chatri Sityodtong}

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Tom Theocharis (9-5, Team Grasso) vs Ryan Loder (6-1, Team Shevchenko)

Tom is slightly taller, Ryan is slightly longer, and there are barely five minutes left in this episode when the bell rings, so I assume we're not going to be here very long.

ROUND ONE

Before the fight starts Loder signals no glove touch, which I appreciate. Both men shuffle out to the center of the cage but Tom almost immediately falls back to the fence under Ryan's forward-moving footwork, and the second Tom swings a leg kick Ryan is on him hunting for a single-leg takedown. It was shot from pretty far out and he didn't get in particularly deep, but he is A Wrestler and Tom Is Not so they're on the ground within five seconds anyway. Loder immediately begins teeing off with punches and elbows, and referee Mark Smith warns Tom within seconds that he needs to get out of the position, which is pretty abrupt. But in fairness, he's not really moving. Ryan is just punching him in the face dozens of times. Theocharis manages to hold his wrist and stop the punches, but that allows Ryan to slide straight into mount and begin dropping fists on his ribs. Ryan dives on a far-side arm triangle, Tom's head starts turning crimson before he even has it fully locked in, and as Ryan begins to slide off to the side to deepen the choke Tom begins tapping.

Ryan Loder wins by submission. The wrestler who wrestles people won with wrestling and it took 80 seconds. In an appreciably adorable moment, Tom follows Ryan to the fence to give him a hug, congratulate him, and (jokingly) land one punch; Robert Valentin, hanging over the side of the cage, offers Loder a less happy-looking fistbump and asks distressingly seriously if he wants to fight, to which Loder replies "Maybe later."

Green locker room happy! Blue locker room sad. For some reason the blue locker is also almost entirely empty--no Grasso, no corner, just Guillermo Torres, Kaan Ofli and a cameraman in an otherwise silent room. Weird. Tom vows to return, and next week's fight will be the final Featherweight matchup, with Team Grasso's Mairon Santos against Team Shevchenko's Edwin Cooper Jr.

NEXT TIME ON THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER: People train to fight and then they fight. We are not even pretending there is anything else in this teaser this week, I guess.