Jason Hasselkus

I’ve been waiting for this premier for a while now. Give it to Dana White to bring us something like they haven’t brought us in the previous 3 seasons. This season they are bringing in fighters that have kinda fallen from grace. It’s not that they are old and washed up, they are anything but that, they just haven’t had the spot light like some of the newer up and comers. 16 guys, that have skills and have proven that they can fight in the octagon, and now vying for that contract with the UFC.
The trainers for this season are awesome too, Randy Couture, Georges St. Pierre, and Mark Dellagrotte, not bad company to get excellent training from. One of the things they are doing different this season is not having “Coaches”, they are just bringing in trainers and letting the teams coach themselves. This should be interesting to say the least.
The first episode starts out with the introductions of all the fighters and the picking of teams. To me it appears as though the gray team has a slight edge in talent. And the reason I say that is because I think Matt Serra is going to walk away with one of the contracts. He’s tough and appears to be in pretty good shape, but who knows, in this sport anyone can beat anyone on any given day.
So the main event of the episode is of course the fight. The first fight was Shonie Carter (gray team) and Rich Clementi (blue team). Rich came into the fight pretty confident, but it really wasn’t much of a match. Shonie was illusive and pretty much kept Rich guessing the whole time. The judges scored an unanimous decision for Carter in the end. Are we going to see the next Matt Hughes or Rich Franklin in this season? Nah, not with these guys, but we are going to witness some good fighting and some fairly good match ups.
Since it’s still reality TV, there is going to be drama like all reality TV, but this time it should be different. These guys have been around a while and really want to make it to the big time, or else they wouldn’t be here. Yes there is a lot of attitude, some have it more than others, but I have no doubt that the effort put forth will be greater than any of the other seasons. I could be wrong, but my sense is that this season is worth watching. And for all those out there that think the line up of fighters is a joke, well then you just don’t really understand the UFC and should probably stick to American Idol for all the new fresh faces.