You may notice that the site is decked out today by sponsor NOS Energy Drink, which is also a sponsor of “The Ultimate Fighter” on FS1. As part of a sponsorship deal, LBS will be watching each weekly episode of season 21 of TUF on FS1 Wednesday nights and recapping it here every Thursday. And let me tell you, this week’s episode (the third of the season), was awesome.
This is the first season of TUF where two gyms are facing each other: American Top Team and the Blackzilians. Eight welterweight fighters from each gym will be fighting during the show, and they are all forced to live together in the same mansion in South Florida, making it 16 people living there total.
The Blackzilians, whose gym is situated in Boca Raton, won the first two fights in the season and entered episode 3 leading 50-0 in points (the point structure awards 25 points to the winner of fights 1-4; 50 points to the winner of fights 5-8; and 100 points to the winner of fights 9-12). American Top Team, with a gym in Coconut Creek, decided to have veteran Steve Carl represent them in the third fight as they wanted to get on the board with a victory. Only there was one problem: things did not go as planned.
Carl did not receive much advance notice from his team that he would be representing them in a fight with an unknown Blackzilians opponent, who turned out to be Valdir “Baby Monster” Araujo. He also did not have access to the spa and sauna inside the massive mansion because it was on the Blackzilian’s side of the home. As a result, Carl struggled to make weight.
When the two weighed in for their fight, Araujo was at 170 while Carl was 3/4 of a pound overweight. He was granted one hour to cut the weight, but even that presented a problem: they were at the Blackzilians’ gym, and the Blackzilians were territorial about allowing Carl to use their facilities, such as the sauna. Blackzilians coach Tyrone Spong was upset about this and almost started a fight trying to prevent Carl from using their sauna. Eventually things were worked out and Carl sweated out the weight in order to make the 170-pound limit.
Next up was the actual fight between the two.
In an interview prior to the fight, Carl acknowledged that he is a neck hunter who specializes in submissions, while Baby Monster is a black belt in judo and jiu-jitsu who is very aggressive.
Though ATT kept dogging Baby Monster’s weak chin that “sucks” in their words, that proved to not be a factor.
In the two-round fight, the first round was extremely even between Baby Monster and Carl as they traded a few punches and kicks and spent the better part of the five-minute round up against the cage. Baby Monster had Carl pinned to the cage most of the round and tried to get a takedown but was unsuccessful. He even tried a judo throw, but Carl escaped it.
The second round was much different.
Carl appeared to be worn down from the first round and struggled in multiple ways. He came out flat and hardly looked to throw punches or kicks. Baby Monster landed a few of each, and then Carl got him up against the cage. Carl seemed like he was going to try to take down Baby Monster, which didn’t even seem like a good idea, but he was so tired that Baby Monster was able to slip him into a guillotine choke and take him to the ground where he submitted, giving the Blackzilians their third straight win, a 75-0 points advantage, and a home gym advantage for the next fight.
Carl later said he had a “bad weight cut” and admitted that his “mind wasn’t right at all” for the fight.
“I didn’t deal with all those pressures very well because I fought like s—,” he said, noting that he didn’t have much time to prepare for the fight or weight cut.
The end of the episode saw American Top Team’s Robbie Lawler promising to bring home a win for his team and break the losing streak.
One funny side story to the episode happened at the mansion where Araujo was upset about someone stealing his wine. It turns out that Mike Graves, who lost in episode two, was the one who stole and drank it. But he didn’t fess up to Araujo, saying instead that he preferred to avoid confrontation. Perhaps’ Baby Monster’s win was karma for the stolen beverage. And maybe had Graves stuck to drinking NOS instead of wine, he would have had better success.
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