RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Friday, September 25

S14: The Ultimate Fighter Season One

Just finished watching the first year of The Ultimate Fighter, which I guess became a really popular show at some point in it's history, making MMA The Next Big Thing for like the second or third time in its existence. I am not normally a fan of the reality television genre because honestly I don't like people. So why would I want to hang out and watch a bunch of assholes I don't like live in a house I don't have doing things I don't approve of? Anyways, I decided to watch the whole batch of The Ultimate Fighter, beginning till end (or as far as Netflix lets me go to this point), and after each season, I'd rank the top 14 characters from the show, a listing of the most notable people, from best to worstest. Minor people who didn't register much of a blip on my personal care-o-meter didn't make the cut, because isn't the point of reality TV for me to care, not to be bored to death by boring ass fuckers? Well, here is my opinions for you on the people, characters, events, and circumstances of Season One of The Ultimate Fighter.
#1: FORREST GRIFFIN - You know, the very fact I never heard about this guy from the first season of TUF (internet-favored acronym for The Ultimate Fighter series) shows you how off-the-radar pop culturally UFC and MMA was. I am a white dude with questionable moral decency and occasional discretionary income between the ages of 18 and 40, so I am always on the mental hunt for retarded shit to love upon. Forrest Griffin is young, from the South, and a drunken retard. He should've been huge, like Pepsi commercial huge. He was so big and facially chiseled like bad guys from Sgt. Rock comic books that I thought he was some sort of eastern Euro dude at first. But it turned out he was just awesome. And the finals fight between him and Stephan Bonner was a great fight, although it did little to quell my personal verdict that MMA really isn't anything more than human cockfighting. Of course, I like cockfighting, as well as dogfighting, and even snake and mongoose fighting, so this personal verdict is no condemnation. It just makes me feel skeevy. I want to hire Forrest Griffin to be my personal head of security.
#2: RANDY COUTURE - Such a mellow dude with such a grappling heart. He's just such a chill guy, it's hard not to like him, when you consider what he does. I have read the pro wrestling/MMA dorkletters enough to know there's been drama between him and the UFC, and that he's an old ass dude by MMA standards. Yet he still goes, obviously because he's so chill. Watching this show made me want to chill with Randy Couture, maybe go for a hike, hit up a pick your own apple place, drink some ciders, just chill.
#3: CHRIS LEBEN - He was obviously a basket case, but reminded me of like 3000 people I've known who work the door in the meat market bar district of any city. They are good people to know because you get in for free and if you smoke them out sometimes, they'll get the bartender to hook you up because you're their boy. And for all his emotional wreckage, I probably rooted for him more than anybody else early on in the show.
#4: WILLA FORD - Well, not so much her as her breasts, especially when wearing airbrushed t-shirts.
#5: NATE QUARRY - Nate also seemed like a chill guy, like a Randy Couture understudy. Good actions return tenfold, just like my Hindu grandmother used to say, which is why it was just so sweet of UFC to let him stay on as a coach after he twisted up his footbones.
#6: STEPHAN BONNER - Really, Bonner's a young, goofy, beer-friendly oddball, who probably would've stood out as the most awesomest dude on the show had he not been overshadowed by the even goofier, even more beer-friendly, oddballer of Forrest Griffin. Bonner's goofiness was more deadpan and low key, like Stephen Wright, so not as easily entertainable as Griffin's overgrown monkeyboy style. Still, their finals fight was fucking awesome, and it was great to see them both get rewarded financially by UFC for bludgeoning each other so willingly for the chance.
#7: PETER WELCH - He was the boxing coach, and I build up all these stereotypes in my head, but not as judgements so much as the creations of scenes where all these predictable (to me at least) stories play out, and a boxing coach with the last name Welch talking with a Boston accent and looking like a mug of Guinness plays right into those internal stereotypes. I already know Peter Welch has an aunt who can hook up a hellafied batch of meatballs using like five different types of meat, and Welch plays rugby on Sunday afternoons with a bunch of cops in the park and those guys have kept him out of jail on more than one occasion. Also, Welch's biggest fight when he was still fighting professionally was two steps away from a title fight, but he lost a questionable decision to a Puerto Rican in New Jersey, probably due to a fixed result with two of the judges.
#8: CHUCK LIDDELL - Liddell is one of the UFC's biggest stars to this point, and there's really nothing wrong about him, I just don't trust dudes who regularly rock the Travis Bickle haircut, or with a "KENPO" tattoo. Not dissing or anything, it just reminds me too much of guys who were in the Marines and hang out like they're alternative and chill, but then one night after a heavy round of bong hits, they get all alpha male and pushing somebody around and next thing you know somebody's paralyzed from falling off the second floor deck out back.
#9: DANA WHITE - I had only heard radio interviews with White before watching this show, so didn't know he was such a sleepy-eyed little polebean-looking cat. He has a pretty chill attitude too it seems, though he could display his bossman tailfeathers if necessary. You have to be happy for the guy, because in this age of Facebook accumulation of high school memories, the dude's living the dream of having known some guys who got rich and then they pay him tons of money to run this thing they own now. Too bad I came from a piece of shit place where everybody who got rich from there is probably middle class at best by world standards. Actually, that's not too bad. I is what I is, and got no gripes, except I wish my penis was thicker.
#10: MIKE SWICK - He sort of hung around in the background, with his sculpted beard, looking like eventual fodder for something or another. And then he just went away. In fact, he wouldn't have even made my final list if it wasn't for his goofy facial hair stylings, which is good, because if you have like six or seven guys that don't stand out and take up the background space, they need to look different at least. That's what Mike Swick did.
#11: LODUNE SINCAID - You knew he'd be gone quickly, but his questionable behavior, flaunting around and bending his ass over in front of other guys, that was some good shit to see in a house full of alpha males. I'm sure if he stayed in MMA, he had a tough time living that down. Or maybe he didn't. Perhaps it opened up a whole new world of happiness to him. Hell, for all I know MMA is just as rife with closeted, degenerate-types of homosexuality as professional wrestling is.
#12: ALEX SCHONAUER - Another of the anonymous background guys, but he had that good fight with Forrest Griffin. Unless it was the other anonymous Alex guy. I can’t really say for sure, even after looking at Wikipedia. But whichever Alex was from Brazil or whatever and had that fight with Forrest, that dude was completely indistinguishable during the entire series, and then was awesome for like four minutes, then gone from the show. That’s how you do a reality TV show without embarrassing your family.
#13: JOSH KOSCHECK - Mulatto guys with blue eyes should never be trusted. They have received all of Dr. Yakub’s evil genius through the sexual desires of their own god and earth-like ancestors. It is the twisted realization of the pollution of the human race with greed and devilry. And watching that show, Koscheck was the most devilish character there. Even without watching the show, you can see it in his eyes.
#14: DIEGO SANCHEZ - This guy’s a tool, straight up. Like, you can tell mentally he’s not that smart at all, yet he’s been trained as an MMA fighter, and he loves Jesus. That would be funny if it were a quip on The Family Guy, but it’s a for-real human being walking around breathing oxygen and in all likelihood procreating with an equally stupid human being. Diego Sanchez made me sad for the future.

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