Sherdog.com's Guide to TUF 8

Unless you are an R. Kelly fan, episode eight of “The Ultimate Fighter” got off to a particularly nasty start.

I fired up the old laptop, unwrapped my delightfully Cajun Boudain sausage sandwich and iced up a Dr Pepper. Time to treat myself to some food and fight indulgence, and I had earned it. I was about three bites in when Tom Lawlor decided he’d had enough of the Nogueira team stealing his food. Apparently, Lawlor had been returning from training to find his daily fruit tray devoured. As the red team helped themselves to some watermelon, I was thinking that some grapes would be pretty good along with my spicy Creole delight.

Lawlor decided to take the law into his own hands, literally, by urinating on his own fruit tray. As soon as this idea was formulated, I hit pause and calmly rolled my sandwich back into the wrapper and put it in the fridge.

There were 10,000 talking heads on television Tuesday night gushing over this generation of young voters that are going to lead America into the new century. Maybe so, but you still can’t eat a sandwich around them or trust them not to take a grumpy in your bed. Four dudes lined up to soak the tray, and I had to fast forward.

“Two inches of piss at the bottom,” said Shane Nelson.

I’m almost retching just writing this. I had to fast forward again. The tray had made its way back to the fridge, and I began to pray.

Only four lightweights were left, and Dave Kaplan and Phillipe Nover were chosen to fight next. Nogueira thought Mir had made a bad decision with this pick: “It’s going to be a hard fight for Kaplan.”

Nover was Nogueira’s first pick, and as Kaplan put it, “He’s ostensibly the toughest on their team.”

That marked the first time a fighter has used the word ostensibly on this or any other show. I’m certain about this.

Mir saw the fight differently, saying that it would be an “eye-opening” experience for Nover when he hit Kaplan and Kaplan didn’t blink.

“Kaplan doesn’t move,” Mir said. “The guy’s granite.”

Cut to commercial, and I decided to move my trashcan closer to the sofa. I could already feel what was coming next. Sure enough, as the music started back up, there was Ryan Bader making a beeline for the refrigerator. Nover and Bader dug in first, and my mouth began to do that watery thing. Nover and Bader were loudly slurping their way through the tray, and there was John Polakowski and Kyle Kingsbury noshing a few bites in the kitchen. It was a total nightmare. There have been plenty of TUF pranks over the years, but for the love of Paula Deen, this one took the cake.

Some jackass cook got arrested here locally just a week ago for blowing his nose into the sheriff’s grilled cheese. It’s a felony, I think, yet here was an entire group of men just taking down piece after piece. Kaplan finally spilled the beans, and Nover began to spill his beans. I’d describe the looks on the faces of the pranked as … crestfallen.

“We were wondering why it was such a juicy fruit platter,” said Bader.

Nover was weak in the knees as teammate Kingsbury mocked him. When Nover pointed out that Kingsbury had some too, Kingsbury replied, “Yeah, but I don’t care.”

Team Mir then headed off to train while Bader and boys spent the next five hours spitting.

Time for the part of the show where we got the background on the fighters, and Dave Kaplan arrived at the TUF house with a deadly combination, having wrestled collegiately at Old Dominion coupled with five years of training muay Thai with Ernesto Hoost.

“I go on autopilot,” Kaplan said. “My body knows what to do. It’s instinct at this point.”

Just when you thought that it couldn’t get any worse, Armageddon. More food issues developed when Nover’s sushi went missing. Kingsbury decided that the best plan of action would be to dress up the sushi with the only body fluid left that comes out of your no-no hole.

Yep, that’s right. Nover cracked open a new tray of sushi, and Kingsbury took a minute or two alone to whip up a batch of “Cajun mayo” or “man mustard,” or if you are a Grey Poupon kind of guy, “Gentleman’s relish.” Kaplan had been the culprit so far, and sure enough he went back for the tainted batch. I was beginning to wonder if this job was worth it anymore.

Nover’s teammates began to grill Kaplan about the sushi. Kingsbury threw out the idea that perhaps Kaplan may have ingested something foreign. The look on Kaplan’s face was priceless -- priceless meaning the blood drained out of it and he looked ill.

Kaplan issued a haunting threat to Kingsbury: “You will have my fecal matter on your person within the next three days.”

Remember that movie “The Ring”? You watch a video and die within five days or something. This was almost worse.

It was like a Food Network marathon as Nover followed all of that nonsense up with a Filipino delicacy. He brought out a bowl of large eggs that were, apparently, just about to hatch ducklings before they were boiled and then eaten in their fetal stage. The stuff looked so atrocious that semen-covered Ahi tuna didn’t sound so bad anymore.

Remember when Kaplan used “ostensibly” in a sentence? Kaplan was following that up by wowing his teammates with more info. After hearing about his smarts, Mir asked Kaplan, “What is the capital of Zaire?”

“Zaire, which is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is Kinshasa,” replied Kaplan in about two seconds. Impressive.

“It just seems like this kid is going to dominate everyone here,” said Dana White of Nover heading into his fight with Kaplan.

Just seconds after touching gloves, Nover proved why he was White’s pick of the litter. Mir called Kaplan granite, but Nover tore through him like gypsum. (Geology high five!)

Nover tagged Kaplan with three hard shots that caused him to wilt and go down. He then hopped on top and never let up until he had Kaplan flattened out and tapping from a choke.

“I’m the toughest registered nurse on the planet right now!” Nover proclaimed.

Mir was more than disappointed in Kaplan. Kaplan didn’t have any answers for Mir as to why he had changed game plans.

“Nover took advantage of what Kaplan gave away freely,” said Mir.

Mir and Kaplan sulked for a while, both convinced that he could and should have won the entire show. The two sat quietly for a while, ruminating in the loss until Mir broke the silence.

“New Zealand?” he asked.

The swollen-eyed Kaplan chewed his gum for a second and answered, “Wellington.”