This season of TUF introduced a pleasant new change to the show's format - in that the fighter's actually had to beat somebody to get on the cast, of course resulting not only in the hilarity of 16 guys-who-were-convinced-they-were-already-celebrities being sent home without ever getting to see the house, but resulting in a cast that it was evident deserved to be on the show. No offense, Blake Bowman and Andy Wang, but had you undergone similar testing you probably would've been dropped off 2 stop lights before the gym.
The fights were good, the frauds were exposed, and with the possible exception of C.B. Dollaway, we got the two guys in the finale who deserved to get there. I've seen a lot of people surprised that Gerald Harris didn't get a second look, as he was one of the highly-touted prospects coming into the show, but giving the other two semi-finalists another chance is fair enough to me. Make no bones about it though, Amir is the fan-favorite; C.B. is kind of an expletive.
What THIS Pulitzer-esque journalist sees as the selling points of this card are the pretty dope matchups from top to bottom, and the fact that it's free and Spike's first card in HD. Obviously about 4 people would buy it if they had to throw down $40-50 on it but they don't so this is a pointless sentence. On to the ANALYSIS!!!
Main Event
Evan Tanner vs. Kendall Grove (Middleweight - 185 lbs.)
What we have here is two guys who absolutely cannot afford to lose. There aren't any chumps in the UFC anymore, so while in the past these guys might be able to drop a few in a row and still have a job, they can't now because the middleweight division has made a comeback. And they're between the contenders and the guys who are fighting each other to become contenders. Tanner was the first UFC Middleweight Champion, his base is wrestling but was well-rounded before you needed to be well-rounded to make it out of the cage alive. After conquering the bottle he got the passion for fighting back and returned to the cage at UFC 82 for the first time since UFC 59. Unfortunately for him, he ran into a guy named Yushin Okami, a brutally strong wrestler who decided that he was going to bring some standup into the Octagon that night, knocking out Tanner early in the 2nd with an equally brutal knee. Okami's in line for a title shot with the best fighter in the world later this year so it's not like Tanner folded against some hobo, he hung in there with a contender and happened to fall short.
The middleweight champion of TUF 3, Grove is like the UFC equivalent of Shawn Bradley, going 6'6 at his 185 pounds. If there's something he isn't better than his opponent at, one would probably have to point to his wrestling, but the leverage he's able to command at that height actually makes him into a reasonable wrestler. The dude was on a roll to begin his career, then he ran into Patrick Cote @ UFC 74 and Jorge Rivera @ UFC 80, both of whom knocked him out early in the first round. When you lose 4 of your 5 defeats via knockout, your chin SURPRISINGLY ENOUGH becomes a question mark, dare I say a liability. Both fighters prefer clinch work when standing, and at this point in both of their careers it's hard to say whose is better but this guy right here is telling you that's where it's going to be decided. It's hard not to root for Tanner, given his long history in the sport and all that personal-demon-overcoming, but I personally see Grove's length standing being the difference here and Tanner running into his knee like he did against Okami. Grove by TKO.
Co-Main Event
Amir Sadollah vs. C.B. Dollaway
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