"It's not hype, I promise." (And MAJOR props to Eliot Marshall)

Although the focus of this article is going to be Junie (as it's my weekly wrap-up of Junie's antics on the show), I wanted to first give MAJOR props to Eliot Marshall with his win over Shane Primm on last night's episode of TUF. That was a dominant performance, man. Got the full mount in 30 seconds, took his back about 15 seconds after that and then worked until you choked him out.

I thought Eliot had great transitions and was able to maintain the dominant position with what looked like a fair amount of ease. For Eliot's point of view on everything, check out FightTicker.com where you can find weekly blog entries by Eliot on TUF. You can find his most recent blog entry here.

Check after the jump for my thoughts on the latest episode of TUF.



"It's not hype, I promise." - Junie Browning

So next week is going to be the time when we get to see whether it really is all hype when it comes to Junie. But let's back up for a minute and discuss Mir's "talk" with Junie. I understand Junie might have finally realized what he was doing, but still -- that talk didn't seem like much.

So Junie is fighting Delgado -- don't know too much about him, so I'll leave out the speculation for now, except to say that I hope if Delgado's BJJ black belt turns out to be legit, that Junie's submission defense is better than it appeared against Efrain when they were rolling (and Efrain allegedly kept tapping him with a guillotine). Delgado blogs for MMAWeekly - you can check out his most recent blog entry here.

In it, he talks about Frank Mir questioning his BJJ black belt in the next episode, and he provides a link to a video of what he says is his BJJ black belt testing, but it seems to be the second of two videos, and I hope the first has a lot more info than the second, because the second didn't really seem like a test for a BJJ black belt...but then again, as I don't have one, and have only heard what the tests are like, I can't say for sure.

I'm looking forward to the fight.

Let's move on to some other things from this episode. First, what is Krzysztof's deal with other dudes' underwear and shrinkwrap? That's a weird fetish. But more importantly, I was happy to see that Nogueira agrees with me that K-So is the one to watch out for when it comes to the pranks in the house. Like I mentioned in my post-TUF entry last week, K-So is going to be the one quietly picking away at everyone in the house until something blows up.

Finally, I'll say that I have the utmost respect for Nogueira, but I do question his going to the house to talk to Team Mir about the pranks. I know Efrain didn't exactly run and tattle to Nogueira, but still, it seems kind of weak that the coach came to try and cut out the pranks.

Now, regardless of that, when Nogueira's talking, people should listen. However, like Eliot said, they're all going to mess with each other and have fun in the house (I'm paraphrasing, obviously). While Nogueira's intentions were good, I still don't think he gets the difference in fighting lifestyles between fighters in the U.S. and fighters in Brazil. Much like in a number of other categories, the U.S. has a more relaxed approach to the overall picture.

Does that mean U.S. fighters are weaker than Brazilian fighters? No. But it does mean that you're not going to hear an American coach come to a house full of dudes and booze and complain that one of his team members didn't get enough sleep the night before. Has Nogueira ever even seen the show before? Does he not realize Junie actually lives in the house, too? I'd say sleep comes at a premium most of the time.

I applaud Nogueira's efforts -- I think everyone would benefit from the house being calmer; I just hope that as the season progresses, he gets a more realistic picture of what happens so he won't get offended when the pranks keep coming. Demanding a higher standard from all the fighters is an admirable goal -- I just think because of how dedicated he is, Big Nog might take it personally when the pranks don't stop (and let's be honest, they'll probably never stop, even if TUF goes on for 100 more seasons).

On a final note, I'd like to say that sparring with Anderson Silva would have to be one of the most amazing, humbling, and scary experiences a person could go through. It was easy to see that Bader was hesitant, but it wasn't hard to tell that Silva was encouraging him to go harder and faster -- I can only imagine that sparring with Anderson Silva, even if he was only going at 1/4 speed, would seem like fighting for your life. But I have a great deal of respect for Silva getting in there and working with the guys, and being as encouraging and persistent as he was. If nobody ever challenges a fighter, that fighter will never get better.

I have a feeling that this time next week I'm either going to be extremely happy and shouting a lot of "In your face", OR I'll be taking crap from members of tons of other sites about Junie being all hype. Hopefully it's the former.

-PreView