Ryan McGillivray’s TUF 13 blog – episode 5

Hello to all the fights fans out there. Ryan McGillivray here with another weekly recap of The Ultimate Fighter season 13. Episode 5 has come and gone and another interesting week capped off with, in my opinion, a better fight than we have seen.

We haven’t had the typical season of trash talking or in house antics as some seasons past. However there seem to be more conflicts developing among the members of the same team. We have Cope coming under heat for “playing both sides”, Brock coming down hard on his team, and of course Junior and Coach Lew not seeing eye to eye.

This is interesting in a sense that there have not been too many internal conflicts on past seasons, which is a new dynamic. It definitely made it challenging being on the show for some of the fighters, adding to the already many stresses of being on the show.

I wasn’t expecting so much mental warfare heading into the show and for myself it was a lot to take in. I did my best to stay away from it and play devil’s advocate. For my team’s issue between the coaches I was on both sides and felt both coaches were trying hard for us and know it is a challenging role. Keeping that in mind, what has happened since the show has really been hard to support coach Lew and some of his comments.

We start the show looking into the locker room of Team Lesner after Charlie’s fight. First and foremost I would like to back Charlie up who has been under fire for tapping “quickly”. Though it was seemingly quick, everyone has to keep in mind they don’t know everything that is going on in the fight.

dCharlie tore some tissue in his shoulder and I believe dislocated it during the fight and I have to think that played a factor. Brock continues to come down hard on his team for not giving their all and selling themselves short, most notably offending Len in the process.

I have a few thoughts on the matter as I was in the cage with Len and may have some insight. First of all, Brock wasn’t even there as Len mentions. I am not for a second questioning Brock for taking care of his personal life, but in my opinion he loses the right to call Len out.

I felt like Len came with everything he had. I had him in trouble a few times and he never gave up and even when his gas tank was empty he kept trying to fight through it. I agree with Brock trying to fire up his guys, especially the remaining guys left to fight, but believe he went the wrong way about it.

We regained control of the fight pick and were confident when we picked Mick to fight Clay. Since I was quite homesick as well missing my daughter, I knew how Mick felt. I had mentioned in passing to Junior I thought it would be a good idea to get him in the cage sooner than later before his daughter’s motivation turned into a distraction.

I am not sure if that helped them decide to pick Mick but thought it was something to keep in mind. We knew Tony was a good wrestler and Chuck has a very solid ground game so Clay seemed to match up the best. He came off as more of a stand up guy and we thought we could create a good stand up fight in which Mick could win.

We get a closer look into the internal conflict between team Lesner and Chris Cope. Mick and I were playing pool and thought it would be funny to write “Chris Cope Double Agent”. We originally just wanted to bug Chris and let him know that he was a HORRIBLE spy.

We could tell every time he was around that he was trying to get information from us. It turned out that his team really started to question him and not trust him at all. This was not planned but not a terrible thing. One thing I found hilarious was when Cope accused Tony of writing in the sand.

First, Tony would never do it and was a very quiet guy like myself that did his own thing. Second, it was written with a rake in sand, I can’t imagine how someone could match handwriting with a rake. This was probably the funniest thing about the situation.

Then they thought it was me because there was a foot print in the sand and it was a sandal from what seemed to be a big foot. Well first off I didn’t have sandals in the house and second my feet are a size 9 ha-ha. So not only was a Cope a terrible spy but apparently a worse investigator.

Enough about the silly things in the house let’s go over the fight. We were right in picking Clay in that we thought it would encourage a stand-up fight. However it did not go the way we had planned.

Both fighters landed some good combinations and looked good at different points in the fight. For some reason Mick was reluctant to pressure the fight and push the pace. I think that was the downfall of the fight for Mick.

I believe they were closely matched and whoever pushed the pace would come out on top. On this night Clay was the better and more aggressive fighter.

I thought that it was close but I gave both rounds to Clay and thought it was just a tough night for Mick, which we all have. There was a small chance of a third round but unfortunately for Mick and our team the judges thought Clay did enough.

So now with only two fights left , Team Lesner has control to pick the last two fights by default. The next episode has two fights on it and the wild card pick judging from the commercial at the end. Should be a great episode and the conclusion of the first round of fights.

Hope everyone enjoyed my look into this episode and I will see everyone in a week’s time for another recap.

Ryan McGillivray’s TUF 13 blog will be posted on ProMMAnow.com following each Wednesday night episode of The Ultimate Fighter: Team Lesnar vs. Team dos Santos. Be sure to follow Ryan on Twitter @KidMcGillivray.