The Ultimate Fighter 8 Semifinal Results

Last night was the double episode for the Semifinals of The Ultimate Fighter Season 8. This season has gone by fast an as usual we see some crazy stuff happen in the house. Pranks and idiocy. The only fighter we really saw any in-house aggression from this year was Junie Browning and somehow he stayed around. All things must come to an end though. I’m going to keep the drama out of this recap and just give you the results.

Episode 11 opened up with Ryan Bader facing Elliot Marshall. Talk about a snoozing fight. This fight had a lot of boring stand up and even more boring ground game. It went three rounds and Ryan Bader gets the decision at the end of the third.

The lightweight bout pitted Philipe Novar against George Roop. I never thought George Roop had a chance in this fight and I was right. Novar catches Roop in a Kimura in the first round and force him to tap.

The first fight of episode 12 from last night put Light Heavyweights, Vinny Magalhaes up against Krzysztof Soszynski. Vinny’s stand up is kind of limited and Krysztof hit him with a lot of inside leg kicks. Vinny obviously wanted to take it to the ground but was cautious about it. When it finally went to the ground Vinny’s great jiu-jitsu went in to effect and he submitted Krysztof with an Arm Bar. I like Krysztof, but I didn’t think he had a chance on the ground.

The Lightweight Fight pitted a discouraged but over-confident and cocky Junie Browning up against Efrain Escudero. When the fight first started both fighters touched gloves and then Juie did a quick reach for the floor in a stretching exercise. This would have been a great opportunity for Escudero to kick him in the head, and I think he should have. Junie wasn’t setting up any good combination and when it finally went to the ground Escudero caught Junie in D’Arce Choke. Will this be the last we see of Junie Browning? Probably not.

Here is the final fights:

Ryan Bader Vs. Vinny Magalhaes (My pick: Vinny)

Philipe Novar Vs. Efrain Escudero (My pick: Novar)

I think it’s quite obvious that most people are going to pick the same fighters I did and for obvious reasons. Vinny is just too good on the ground and chances are he’s improved his stand up since the last episode was recorded. Bader has mediocre stand up and mediocre ground game. There’s no doubt that he has been working on his ground game in preparation for this fight but it won;t be nearly enough to stop Vinny’s Jiu-Jitsu.

Philipe hits hard and has good jiu-jitsu on the ground. Esudero has decent stand up but is more of a wrestler on the ground. I don;t think it will match up well against Novar.

Now as usual both of my picks are based on the fighters overall skill, but we all know that anything is possible and sometimes the best fighters get caught right on the button by the under-dog. We’ll see what happens next weekend.

So looking back at this season, I have a few things to say about the coaches. I think Nogueiro chose good assistants and created good cohesion inside his team. Frank Mir in my opinion did a shitty job of coaching. He did a lot of barking out advice from his corner during fights but I didn’t see a lot of coaching during training sessions. They did a lot of conditioning but when it was time for good coaching and fight training I saw Mir sitting up against the wall a lot. Notice Team Nogueiro had three fighters in the end and Mir had one and that was a guy that brought great Jiu-Jitsu skills with him so it doesn’t say much for Mir. Mir is a good fighter. A good coach? No.