Dave and I spent yesterday evening and most of today watching the Ultimate Fighter marathon on Spike TV.  He's been a cage fighting fan for ages and I never really understood what he saw in it...until I watched last's night's episodes, then I was hooked.

These guys beat the crap out of each other.  Literally.  They punch, kick, grapple, choke...they go all out to make the dude they're fighting either 'tap' out or not be able to get up off the floor of the cage.

There were some pretty graphic moments.  Eyebrows are fragile things, they split open pretty easy and bleed a lot, and eyes don't take that long to swell up after being hit or poked. 

There were a lot of fights that had me sitting up in bed, yelling "kick!! Kick HIM!!!"  or "choke that mofo out!  Make that a$$hole tap!", and there were an equal amount that had me saying "ooh!  That HAD to hurt!".

There was one, though, that made me wince.  Two heavyweights were scrapping - Seth Petruzelli and Brad Imes were matched up against each other.  Seth's Link 6'1" and weighs in at 235...he's a big boy.  Brad Link ...he's even bigger.  6'7" and 260, he's a big ol' corn fed boy.

Seth has a common fighter's problem - cauliflower ears.  Right before the fight he was saying how his left ear had recently been cauliflowered and it was still pretty painful. 

I didn't like Seth from the moment he opened his mouth.  A lot of cage fighters have big egos, but Seth's just seemed bigger than average.  He also came across as a bit of a pretty boy - he even plucks his eye brows - and we're not talking about getting rid of a uni-brow (which, btw, I think is acceptable for dudes to do).  Oh no, Seth has a better arch to his brow than I do, and I'm a bit of a girly girl when it comes to makeup and perfumes and waxing and polishing and stuff.

Anyway, during the fight Brad figured out that Seth's ear was killing him, and man did he ever take advantage of it.  Every opportunity he got, he went for that ear, and Seth really was hurting.  During one of the breaks between rounds someone from Seth's team went to put an ice pack on the now swollen to three or four times it's normal size ear, and Seth audibly made a whimpering noise and moved his head away.

So, the fight goes on...and on....and on....it went 5 rounds (I won't tell you who won in case you haven't seen it), with Brad smacking on Seth's ear every chance he gets.  At some point, one of them starts to bleed.  It's not unusual to see blood in the ring, like I said earlier, eyebrows are fragile things and Dave and I both figured that someone had a busted brow or a split lip or something.

Until we watched an after fight interview with Brad and he starts talking about how the stuff that came out of Seths ear when it busted open was pretty gross.

Huh?  Gross stuff?  That came out when his ear busted open?

Yeah.  The already painful cauliflowered ear had swelled to bursting point, and one good smack from Brad was all that it took to bust it open.

Wow.  I can't even imagine how much that must have hurt. 

In another after fight interview we were treated to the sight of Seth with his ear bandaged to the side of his head, getting ready to go get his ear somewhat reassembled.  He looked like a pretty-boy version of Van-Gough.  It was probably not a good thing to do karmically, but I laughed when I saw that.  All the smack he'd talked before the fight.....and there he was, bandaged and hurting.....the loser, not the victor.

So, Dave and I have something new that we can enjoy together.  He likes it because...well, because he likes to fight.  When he was up in Greenland he and some of the guys he worked with had kind of a fight club going on.  They'd put out some mats in one of the rooms and start grappling.  They didn't punch or kick much, but they'd try and get each other to either tap or pass out.  There were a few times when Dave would show me the bruises he'd sustained from the most recent battle he'd had. We'd be IM-ing and he'd turn on his web cam and sit there grinning as I 'wow-ed' over his marks. All of the dudes he 'fought' with were bigger than him - which isn't hard because he's a relatively little guy (5'8" and 165), so he was always pretty proud of his battle marks.  He's a tough little fucker, is my husband.  Wiry....got a lot of stamina.  So, anyway, that's why he likes these Ultimate Fighter shows.  I like them because....well, I'm not sure why.  No, it has nothing to do with half naked boys.  It appeals to me on a much more lower level than that.  I guess I like to check out the techniques they use, see how they maneuver their opponents around.  There's a lot of skill involved; it's not sheer brute force than wins a fight.

Tonight's the season finale.  Tonight's the night that we get to find out who wins the contract AND the coveted title.

Should make for some EXCELLENT tv......I'll let you know!