Efrain Escudero's TUF 8 Blog: Episode 7

During this week of The Ultimate Fighter, we start off with the Junie fight recap. This guy ran his mouth and couldn’t finish Rolando. In my eyes Rolando could have beat Junie if he would have kept behind his jab. I really wanted to jump the cage and ask him how it feels!!! I had to stop myself because knowing Junie he would have gone absolutely crazy, but oh well, I'll just have to wait and see what the semi-finals have in store for me.

We started having some fun in practice, even though our practices were always different. We played some games on couple of the days which made me forget about fighting for a while. It reminded me that I was there to enjoy my time there and train hard; there is a time to have fun and a time to work. I really needed it at the time. Meanwhile the other team continued to get upset at us because we were enjoying ourselves and they were miserable.

Then we have Coach Nogueira’s birthday. He could have gone out and had a great time — after all, it is Las Vegas — but he decided to come to the house and hang out with us. We cooked dinner and baked him a cake which was a pretty good time I was glad I could be a part of it, and you see that it really meant a lot to him. Once again the blue team hated on us for this. Let’s face it, that’s all they know how to do at this point. In the house guys talk, that’s a given, but then Vinny started saying that he was better on the ground than Coach Nogueria!!! Word got out to Nogueira, and he didn’t take to it kindly. Coach confronted Vinny, which caused a big scene around the house. Me personally, I would never say that about any of my coaches because I think that my coach is there to help me; not for me to prove anything.

Now it's time for the fight to go down: Vinny vs. Jules. This was not a good matchup for us at all because Vinny has a great ground game and Jules does not have what it takes. I mean, I love Jules and respect him but I didn't think that if it went to the ground he would have any kind of chance. So the fight started and just as I expected Jules stood there and was scared to attack, and Vinny used very good kicks. It was pretty boring to start and when it went to the ground I knew it was over. Sure enough Vinny has his way with Jules. Now the only question is who will fight next in my weight class — I guess we'll have to wait and see who steps in the Octagon next.

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Other notes on last night’s episode…

— At the beginning of the episode, Mir reams Junie out hard for not finishing Roli, and explains that a win like that is basically a loss. K-Sos piles on about Junie's weak cardio. "No more fiascos," Mir warns.

— K-Sos screws up his thumb while rolling with Eliot Marshall and thinks it might be fractured, but it isn't mentioned again in the episode. At any rate, Sos is healthy enough to plan a wicked interior decorator prank on Jules Bruchez, outfitting his bed to look like a grave. It's probably the nicest thing anyone's ever done for Jules. "He lived...he died...who cared?" the headstone reads, then below it, "[infinity symbol] - 2008". It's possible that K-Sos misinterprets the meaning of the sideways-eight.

— So, all this he-said/he-said drama started with Frank Mir telling Vinny that he's better than Nogueira at submissions. Vinny actually agrees: "He's, like, so basic." A couple of the red team members let Nog know about it, and Minotauro takes it very, very personally. Nog confronts Vinny in Portuguese: "You really blew it. Now we're enemies. Enemies." Yikes. Vinny denies the story and apologizes profusely, but Nog ain't havin' it.

— Shane Nelson on the Big Nog birthday party: "Team Nogueira suuucks. They're too close too soon. They act like they've known each other for 20 years. They suck each other's dicks too much....they're like all over each other's dicks. It's like...too much." Well honestly, how much is too much?

— Stankie on standup vs. ground fighting: "Wouldn't it be nice if you were so good on top you didn't have to go down and get dirty, smell all those farts, bam bam bam bam! Wouldn't that be nice?"

— The Vinny/Jules fight seemed like another example of Team Mir picking off the weakest link from Team Nog. It's unfortunate to see the good guys lose another one, but Jules Bruchez, like Roli Delgado, wasn't quite ready to be there. He knew he'd be at a disadvantage on the ground — but who knew he'd get dominated on the feet (if you could call Vinny's occasional leg-kicks domination). Though the first few minutes of the fight were deathly boring, the end was thrilling. The slickness of Vinny's clinch to guard-pull to gogoplata attempt to armbar should have the other 205'ers on the show very, very worried.