TUF 12: Georges St-Pierre Finally Comes Out In Episode 2

Thank Heaven! The readers of my last article, "Georges St-Pierre: Not Impressed With Your Performance," reassured me that I was giving up on Georges prematurely. Certainly, my readers were correct.

In episode two, Georges unleashed his personality with smiles, laughter, impressions from his favorite movie Full Metal Jacket, and some masterful strategy to get the fighter pick he most wanted.

Seeing Georges take on his coaching task with his typical enthusiasm and exuberance was very reassuring, at least to me. The rest of the series will be well worth the wait and anticipation. Even his workout clothes are interesting, colorful, and as attractive as the wearer.

Now all my concerns on Georges keeping his light under a barrel seem foolish. My readers were right to scold me for my impatience. Of course they have the luxury of not being worried about the passing of time unlike an old girl like me.

Another pleasant surprise was having Georges ending up with a team including all of my initial favorites. Mentioning that he had not picked his team as much for their fighting abilities as his own belief that he could offer each one of them valuable guidance, reinforced my opinion of Georges as being an astute judge of character and an excellent coach.

The last pick, Dane Sayers, was a fighter and person of special interest to me, due to his American Indian heritage. I am so curious to get to know him, as well as the other odd assortment of characters making up Team St-Pierre, better, while watching them develop as MMA fighters.

Not much time was spent exposing the personality of the desired first pick of both teams, Michael Johnson, as the time spent introducing the first two who would fight in the first match.

Josh Koscheck felt so confident that his team's fighter, Jeffrey Lentz, would prevail, that he hinted that Georges had done him a great favor in the selection of the first fighters, rather than suspecting Georges had made a strategic choice to win the first fight, thus retaining control to pick the second fight.

Alex Caceres did not disappoint, showing off his own unconventional skills, plus his imitation of his hero Bruce Lee's impressive and much admired style. (Considering that Bruce Lee went to what he called a "no style" mixture of martial arts skills, he would have been a most impressive modern day MMA fighter).

Although the brash, cigarette-smoking, hard drinking New Jersey boy, Jeffrey Lentz predicted that he would hurt "Bruce LeeRoy" so bad that LeeRoy would be begging to go home the next day, it didn't quite go as he had planned.

Both fighters showed a lot of attempted head kicks—a few of them connecting—and had a lot of time spent up against the fence jockeying for control, before a few good judo throws.

Dana White gave the first round to Jeff, who ended with a strong show by throwing Alex to the mat and appearing to be dominant in the final seconds of the round.

When during the second round, the fight ended up with Alex being on the bottom, where Jeff had predicted he would ground and pound his opponent into a world of pain, I was not at all surprised to see Alex pull the trick on Jeff that BJ Penn had hoped to submit Georges with in their second fight.

Alex used his long, limber legs to wrap Jeff in a triangle, and after some confusion, finally cinched it in to submit Jeff, who earlier, while bragging of his toughness to Alex in the kitchen at the TUF house, had vowed that he would never tap out.

Ah, the false bravado of young men! I have seen quite a lot of that during my 64 years.

Well, the show ended happily for both me and Team St-Pierre, who at some point had picked up Georges' other long-time coach Phil Nurse, who helped corner Alex and supervised him using the breathing technique that he has become famous for using with Georges, along with other Team Jackson fighters.

Unfortunately, a much anticipated confrontation which was shown in last week's previews, between Josh Koscheck and a member of the St-Pierre coaching staff, was not shown. The preview had shown Josh rape-choking an unidentified black man wearing a red shirt, who did not appear at all intimidated by Josh's threatening actions.

Darn! Don't you just hate teases?

Bravo Georges and Company. As Dana said, "well played!"

Can't wait for more next Wednesday! How about you?