The Ultimate Fighter finishes on a… well, it finishes

Put a fork in it, this turkey is done. And it almost put me in a tryptophan coma. The most over-hyped, under-performing and overweight season of The Ultimate Fighter is in the books.

What will I do without my weekly serving of Rashad Evans and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson jabbering at each other like a couple of schoolyard punks? And is it just me or did they pad the final episode with every remaining scrap of footage of these two getting in each other’s face and talking about how much they can’t wait to make each other their bitch when that fight isn’t going to happen and likely never will?

The episode opened with Kimbo Slice saying he didn’t want to fight if the opportunity came up (it didn’t). He has arthritis in his knee and was too afraid to get a cortisone shot and really didn’t want to lose another fight. I thought he was a bareknuckle backyard brawler, a real tough guy. And they call Marcus Jones “Big Baby.”

Then Scott Junk underwent eye surgery – the result of an accidental eye poke in his loss to Matt Mitrione – that threatened to end his fight career (it didn’t). Regardless, Junk’s buddy, Jones, flew into a ridiculous rage of an Old Testament nature – you know, an eye for an eye – and wanted to beat Mitrione up. Again, schoolyard punk stuff.

Doesn’t matter as Mitrione taps out like a white belt to a James McSweeney guillotine in their quarter-final bout. Then Jones darkened Darrill Schoonover’s world like an eclipse, taking him to the ground, working a kimura and crucifix before ending it with a knockout from the guard. Yes, Titties got fucked.

In the semi-finals, Roy Nelson, who continues to misinterpret the term “make weight,” flopped his belly onto a too-cocky McSweeney and finished him with fists from the crucifix, the latest go-to finishing position for heavyweights. The other semi saw Brendan Schaub survive being mounted by Jones and get back to his feet, where he felled Jones like a redwood with a huge right and finished him with bombs. It was the best fight of the series (being the best of a bad lot isn’t saying much but I’ll take what I can get) and so ends the coaching duties of the worst coach in TUF history, Rampage Jackson. Afterward, Jones pondered whether he would ever fight again, saying that it might be time to move on.

So now the stage is set for Schaub vs. Nelson at Saturday’s Ultimate Fighter Finale. You can just feel the excitement in the air. (That’s sarcasm, folks.) Maybe in a few days I’ll write something about where this season went wrong and what they can do to improve things for season eleven, but right now I can’t bear to relive a single second of season ten.