The Ultimate Fighter 12: Team St-Pierre vs. Team Koscheck - Episode 9 Recap

The latest episode of The Ultimate Fighter begins with Sevak asking Sako to beat Jonathon Brookins, since Sevak couldn’t do it himself. If you remember, Brookins defeated Sevak by way of first round rear naked choke. During his training session, Georges St-Pierre stresses that his fighters will only be going through tactical training from this point forward, and they will not be doing any sparring. This idea is meant to keep the fighters hungry when the step into the cage for real. In Team Koscheck’s training session, Kos works with Sako on preventing Jon from taking his back, the same way that he defeated Sevak.

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Back at the house, Jonathon Brookins and Nam Phan separate themselves from the rest of the castmembers, who are partaking in some wild antics inside the house. Marc is in his underwear and running around the guys playing pool. It quickly becomes evident that this season is going to be just like all of the previous seasons; once a large number of fighters are eliminated, their focus goes out the window and they begin to act like animals inside the house. I am just anticipating the drinking and partying going a little too far, though at the moment it seems mostly harmless.

In preparation for the fight with Sako Chivitchian, Jonathon Brookins wants to throw “one million jabs.” He also states that he’d like to stay humble in his UFC journey and upon finishing the taping of TUF, he wants to stay the same old Jonathon. He wants to ride his bike and go to the library and all sorts of stuff he did before he made it big.

TUF 12 - Jonathon Brookins vs. Sako Chivitchian - Round 1

Jonathon takes a quick shot at a takedown right off the bat, but Sako does a nice job defending and the two lock up in an over/under clinch. Jonathon executes a killer lateral drop and overcomes Sako’s world-class judo skills. Jonathon quickly takes Sako’s back and slaps on a rear naked choke. The entire fight took 2:05 and Dana is blown away by Jonathon’s well-rounded skills. Jonathon Brookins is this season’s first semifinalist. Josh Koscheck points out the déjà vu situation in that Brookins used a big throw to set up a quick rear naked choke.

In the next quarterfinal fight of the night, Cody McKenzie of Team GSP takes on Nam Phan of Team Koscheck.

Cody says all but one of his 12 pro wins have come by guillotine choke. He is very confident in all of his skills, but he seems to find himself in the position and ends up taking the choke. GSP says Nam is better on the ground and on the feet, but Cody is tough. GSP wants Cody to press Nam against the cage and neutralize his jiu-jitsu and striking with some dirty boxing. Koscheck says if Nam gets caught in a guillotine, he’ll hit Nam over the head with a chair. In response to the huge blowup from last week, Koscheck may say some ridiculous things, but he is made to look like the bad guy by the editors. In retrospect, his trash talking looks almost playful in this episode, as well as what I have seen online.

Nam is very nervous heading into the fight, partly because of the ramifications of the fight and partly because Cody is so unpredictable. Nam says “Cody’s techniques aren’t correct, but they work!”

TUF 12 - Nam Phan vs. Cody McKenzie - Round 1

Cody shakes off Nam’s proposal to touch gloves to start the fight. Cody charges and takes a quick shot that presses Nam into the cage. After a good bit of dirty boxing, Cody scores a takedown and moves into Nam’s guard. Nam gets back to his feet and in the last 90 seconds, shows off some of that striking that worried GSP. Nam rocks Cody with a right and round one ends. This was a tough round to score, but I’ll hand it to Cody based on Octagon control and a takedown. 10-9 Cody.

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TUF 12 - Nam Phan vs. Cody McKenzie - Round 2

Despite a 5 inch reach advantage for Cody, we see some very successful kickboxing from Nam. Cody looks exhausted and tries frantically for a takedown, but is unsuccessful. Cody is keeping his hands very low and Nam staggers him with a head shot. Nam hits a 1-2 body combo that drops Cody and Nam rains down blows until Josh Rosenthal jumps in, putting a stop to the fight. Nam Phan is the 2 nd Semifinalist of the season, and his coach Josh Koscheck is very excited, and shows it by celebrating wildly. This celebration angers GSP, which GSP admits got under his skin. He admitted that when he trains, he will have Koscheck’s behavior on his mind as motivation.

Next week, we will see the remaining two bouts between Aaron Wilkinson and Kyle Bradley and the match between Michael Johnson and Alex Caceres.