Another ho-hum week in the house. Nothing to crazy to speak of went down.
Mike Rio was sparring with Miles Jury, getting him ready for his fight, when he got caught with a spinning back fist and fell to the ground in pain. Turns out he “tweaked” his knee. In fact, Cruz says “He’s hurt, not injured” and has him continue anyway.
Later, Rio tells us that Cruz trains and coaches intense. WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY MIKE???
Sorry for the outburst.
Rio also says his knee won’t stop him. Says he tries not to show anything around the blue team or coaches.
We are told (again) that Al Iaquinta was supposed to be on season 12 but broke his hand and couldn’t finish the show.
Coming of the terrible game planning for Team Faber last week, we see Iaquinta pull Faber aside and discuss with his coach what he would like to do in the fight. Iaquinta says that in the locker room his team is talking defense, but he wants to focus on offense. Faber agrees.
During training, Faber says they want to push the pace and put pressure on Jury. “If you’re full exhausted after 10 minutes, you haven’t done a good job.”
Faber visits the house. Says they are all cool guys, on both teams and that he wants to make sure they all have all the tools to get the most out of this process. To help with this, he brings in his life coach, Jim Peterson, who works with Team Alpha Male. Most of the guys seem receptive to it. Ogle liked it. Said it helped him become a little more mentally strong. The only guy who didn’t take part? Tickle.
“I don’t need no damn life coach,” Tickle tells us. “A life coach to me, is probably for somebody who is mentally weak,” he adds.
Cruz wants Miles Jury NOT to “pace himself” he wants him to push the pace. ” The key is going to be keeping Iaquinta on his heels and keep him guessing with faints”
Andy Ogle wants to fight the now injured Rio because he beat his friend to get into the house and he thinks he can get the job done.
Al Iaquinta vs Miles Jury
Iaquinta is Fabers #1 pick, Jury is undefeated as a pro.
Interesting that Al said Jury has never been through the wars that he has, yet Jury is 9-0 and Al is 5-1-1. One would think you would want to have a significant number of fights over your opponent to make that claim.
As I predicted last week, the fight was a good one…OK, 2/3 of it was good. The “sudden victory” round wasn’t the greatest in the world, but I’ve seen worse.
I had Jury winning round 1. After some exchanges on the feet, Jury found himself in an awkward position, but was able to work out of it and land a nice suplex. He ends the round on Iaquinta’s back.
I gave Iaquinta round 2. He pushed the pace and really dictated the fight. However, Jury caught him with a spinning back fist that wobbled the Team Faber #1 pick. Jury went in for the kill but got caught himself and ended up dazed. Jury would again get Iaquinta’s back, but didn’t do anything with it. The round ends with a sneaky takedown by Jury.
After the round, Iaquinta is heard yelling “Let’s do another one”.
He would get his wish.
There is a really long commercial break between the end of round 2 and the start of round 3. Very odd.
The fight goes to “sudden victory”. Al comes out dropping bees in round 3. We hear Lloyd Irving BEGGING Jury for a single. He then starts calling for a 2-3 under (I’m assuming cross, hook, shoot/single). The round’s pace is slow, but Iaquinta picked Jury apart. The round is scored as follows:
10-9 Jury (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot???)
10-9 Iaquinta
10-9 Iaquinta
Iaquinta wins via split decision.
FABER GETS TO PICK
Before we get to the picks, Anik comments to Dana White that the long gap between rounds 2 and 3 was “interesting” to which White replies, “yeah, I don’t know if I would call interesting, it wasn’t good. There is one minute rest in-between rounds, we’ll get that fixed.
Faber says, “I commend Dominic on making some tough match-ups, but this next pick I hope we’re going to have a pick advantage in…but everyone is tough here, so ummm [awkward pause] – [stumble on words a second] we’ve been flip-flopping on what we’re going to do, but we’ve gotta go with “brown beard aint’ scared, long hair don’t care” – and Dominic said in the first fight that Larsen has trouble with tough wrestlers, he said that in the commentary before we picked teams so we’re going to go with Larsen.
Larsen charged up to Chiesa for the stare down, but that was it, just mean muggin’. So next week we’ll see Jeremy Larsen vs Michael Chiesa.
Very awkward moment for Faber. Maybe it was just me, but I got the feeling that he didn’t know what to do. Even in not doing ANYTHING, Cruz looks like the better team leader and coach.
QUICK NOTES:
– It’s good Cruz trains hard, but there is a fine line. especially on a show when guys are only getting a 1 week camp.
– Faber finally got off his first good quip of the season. He said that Jury might want to get a boring decision win like his sensei, “The decision-ator”. Not bad Faber, not bad.
– Unless it was some sort of team secret, Faber yelling 1 minute with 1:28 left on the clock seemed strange. I guess that can motivate the fighter, but it can also make you do dumb stuff too soon.
– How did judge Adalaide Byrd see Jury winning that 3rd round? That was just dumb.