The Ultimate Fighter 10 Episode 7

In episode seven of The Ultimate Fighter: Heavyweights, we learned just why Matt Mitrione is affectionately called Meat Head, or is he as dumb as he seems?

With Team Rashad still in control of picking the fights, having won six straight fights, they selected to square off against Scott Junk with their own Matt Mitrione, the Meat Head. One morning, Matt drank his teammate Jon Madsen’s orange juice, which pissed this teammate off, and he said to someone that he’d like to slap Matt in the meat head, which got back to Matt, who was very unhappy about it.

Now, on MTV’s The Real World, when there is a stupid incident, juice related or otherwise, you sit your angry self down in the little video room and complain about the person. On Spike’s The Ultimate Fighter, you train with the guy that day, you’re told to just go 60%, and instead you explode on that guy kicking and punching the crap out of him. Matt, if you’re on Craig’s List, and I need a roommate, I’ll take a pass. I don’t need some guy taking all my orange juice and kicking my ass, cause that’s just adding insult to injury.

Apparently this guy was rubbing everyone the wrong way, and many of them participated in a pool betting on the day when the “rat will snap,” since he did not seem trustworthy and presented himself as a ticking time bomb. Wes Sims started this project, since he was ticked off about Matt concocting a story that Mike Wessel was scared to fight Scott Junk. To get him to snap and win his pool, Wes dressed up as a ninja, “scaled” a wall, ducked through the bushes, and did a sneak attack ninja-style on Matt who was shooting baskets alone, since no one can stand him. Now, Wes would make a solid roommate because he is funny as hell.

The fight itself this week was representative of everything good and bad about fights in the heavy weight division: two really big guys slugged each other in the head over-and-over, but they ran out of gas midway through the first round and never fully recovered. To these guys’ credit, they threw and took some really hard shots, but anyone with some better conditioning would have got the best of either one of these guys, who in their sluggish state, left themselves very vulnerable for just about anything.

So, Team Rampage lost again, and he went into a, well, rampage, driving an elbow through a door, ripping it off its hinges, and snapping it in two. His rage is understandable in that he wanted to win more than ever having duked it out with Rashad in their most heated debate yet, with Rashad continuing to try to provoke Rampage, and culminating with Rampage daring him to “jump, froggy!” At one point Rashad accused Rampage of not being a coach to his guys, to which Rampage agreed and said he lets his team of coaches do the coaching. Really? Then what exactly is it that you do, Rampage? On spike.com, you can watch the Aftermath where Junk admits that he could not get pumped up for the fight. Isn’t that what Rampage should be doing? He can get all jacked up to beat the hell out of an inanimate door, but he can’t do the same for one of his fighters? Also on the Aftermath, Matt “Meat Head” Mitrione admitted that a lot of his antics were head games, that he was wrong for making up that story about Mike Wessel, and he presented as not that stupid. Perhaps he isn’t such a Meat Head after all . . .

By Matthew J. Swanson

Matthew J. Swanson is a playwright, fighting enthusiast, and author of all sorts of other “stuff.” Get a look at his writing with links to other publications to which he contributes at his blog page updated every day (mostly) at www.thegancer.blogspot.com.