Martin Stapleton vs. Cameron Dollar:
This was a quick match which ended with Dollar getting a submission victory. The lead-up was focused on Dollar being terrified of fighting and how the pressure of the house is getting to him. Dollar appeared to be humbled very quickly when he got picked to fight Stapleton.
Dollar reminds me somewhat of Chris Leben, a young cocky prick who needs a little bit of humbling to develop into a good fighter. The difference is, Leben believed in himself. Hopefully this performance will calm Dollar down a bit so that he can focus on fighting instead of talking shit.
As far as the fight goes, I think Dollar got a bit lucky with his early strike but managed to capitalize on it and put Stapleton away. I am not sure who was in more shock about the result, Dollar or Stalpeton but the fact that dollar, scared as his was, kept to his gameplan of taking the fight to the ground.
In my opinion, if a fighter doesn't show up scared, there is something very wrong with him. As long as Dollar can continue to harness his fear and convert it into match smarts, he will be fine. I will wait for him to fight again before I sing his praises but so far, he looks like he has the potential to be an undercard fighter in the UFC.
Frank Lester vs. James Wilks:
Frank Lester has got to be one of the most annoying people in the history of TUF. He is the kind of guy who gives fighters a bad name. James Wilks on the other hand seems to be a reserved, intelligent, well spoken English "bloke".
The lead-up to this fight showed Lester exhibiting the exact opposite behavior of his U.S. team-mate. Lester, for some reason, has developed a hatred for James Wilks and proceeded to badmouth him constantly, going as far as to call him a traitor because he trains in the U.S. but is on the U.K. team. Maybe Lester should consider a career in pro-wrestling because he can talk shit but he can't fight.
While Wilks focused on training for the fight, Lester focused on beating Wilks up in the house and his pointless hatred distracted him from actually doing anything productive in his training for the fight.
My favorite part of this episode was Demarques Johnson's offer to pay Lester $100 for knocking out one of Wilk's teeth... Sweet sweet irony will make an appearance later in the show.
The fight itself was, in my opinion a complete domination. While Wilks respected Lester's striking game, Lester, unprepared, didn't know Wilks even had a standing gameplan. The first round featured some back and forth striking, Wilks' attempts at several submissions and some clinch battles.
Towards the end of the first round, Wilks nailed Lester with two sick knees, bloodying up his nose and knocking his four upper front teeth out of his mouth and lodging them deep into Lester's mouth guard.
Michael Bisping's antics were in my opinion pointless as the fighter was ready but the mouth guard wasn't.
The second round was a complete domination by Wilks. Lester realized the hard way that despite Wilk's preference for Jiu-Jitsu, he is not a one-trick-pony. Wilks gets the takedown, passes to full mount exactly as he had trained to do and applied the arm-bar. Did anyone else notice that Lester tapped before the arm-bar had even been locked in?
Overall, this is the kind of episode we should see more of in TUF. While Junie Browing was probabvly great for ratings, the core fans want to see good action from promising young fighters. Hopefully there is more of the same to come for the rest of the season.
