Ultimate Fighter Five: Episode 1 Spoilers

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This is a good week for “The Ultimate Fighter.” Season 4 winner Matt Serra gets his title shot this Saturday night. Season 2 winner Joe Stevenson is in the main event of Ultimate Fight Night. And after that, sixteen new fighters will compete for an opportunity of a lifetime on the debut of “Ultimate Fighter 5: The Lightweights.”

The show may debut tonight, but we have a little sneak preview for you here. This contains spoilers, so don’t cry if you read something you don’t want to know.

THE COACHES
This years coaches are BJ Penn and Jens Pulver (profiled here) and on the first episode alone they’ve done more to sell the feud between the two of them (and that they don’t like each other much) then they did all season with Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock. It started when the coaches got a first look at the fighters. Pulver went first and ran them into the ground, so that when BJ got his chance to see what they had…they were two exhausted to show him anything.

Then when it came to choosing teams, before he made his first pick BJ asked who wanted to be on his team and wanted nothing to do with Jens. Ten fighters raised their hands, which mean Pulver has at least one guy on his team who doesn’t want to be there.

THE TEAMS
Team Penn: Gray Maynard, Matt Winman, Gabe Ruediger, Joe Lauzon, Robert Emerson, Andy Wang, Allen Berube, Noah Thomas

Team Pulver: Corey Hill, Nate Diaz, Brandon Melendez, Marlon Sims, Manny Gambruyan, Cole Miller, Brian Geraghty, Wayne Weems

And if you don’t know who some (or any) of these cats are, we’ve got your hook up.

THE FIGHTERS
I’ll be honest; I usually fast forward through the crap at the house. Watching people act tough, drunk, and mug for the camera doesn’t entertain me, especially when if any of them were as good as they say they are they’d already have a UFC contract. So right off the bat, I hate Corey Hill and Cole Miller.

The only other fighter they had really focused on was Gabe Ruediger, who came into the competition at 177 pounds. Lightweights are 155. Welterweights are 170. So he essentially came in as a Middleweight, and there was concern that if he was chosen to fight first he’d be screwed because it would mean he’d need to cut twenty-two pounds in a day or so.

THE FIGHT
Representing Team Pulver is Cole Miller. Representing Team Penn is Allen Berube…though not for long. In the middle of the first round, after fighting off two other submission attempts, tapped out to a Triangle Choke. Cole Miller moves on to the next round. Berube (I think) gets sent home. Or at the very least, gets sent to a hotel in Las Vegas until the show is finished filming.

So there you have it. Most of the episode was just introducing the contest to everyone, but a few of these cats look like they can really go, and the buzz is that the fights are some of the best in “Ultimate Fighter” history?

Is that just hype? We’re just going to have to tune in each week to find out.