Everyone who has ever grappled or even been to a regular gym knows how dirty a typical fitness center is. People from all over the place come in and pour their sweat (and sometimes blood) all over the place. You don’t know where they’ve been. For all you know, they could have been swimming in a big hospital dumpster with a biohazard logo on it. They could have HIV, hepatitis, the common cold, or even those dreaded cooties.

Everyone who has ever grappled or even been to a regular gym knows how dirty a typical fitness center is. People from all over the place come in and pour their sweat (and sometimes blood) all over the place. You don’t know where they’ve been. For all you know, they could have been swimming in a big hospital dumpster with a biohazard logo on it. They could have HIV, hepatitis, the common cold, or even those dreaded cooties. In the down and dirty world of mixed martial arts things are no different. OCD paranoia aside, this week it’s revealed that despite the UFC crew’s attempts to keep it clean around the gym, someone came in with some kind of staph infection. At this point it doesn’t really matter whodunit, because like HPV at UCSB, everybody’s got it. According to Din Thomas, those of darker color are not affected by staph, but his garage medical science is quickly exposed as false when he himself gets it.

After a quick little recap of last week’s equally quick fight, the spotlight is once again on Jeremy Jackson. There are a couple possibilities for the motivation behind this: 1) he’s actually fighting this week, or 2) he’s the troublemaker that was alluded to in last week’s preview. Which one is it? Well I’ll give you a big hint: he’s not fighting this week for reasons to be explained later. Turns out Jeremy has been dealt a pretty rough hand in life, and he’s been living out of his car for about the last six months. Like Jewel, sometimes you gotta hit rock bottom before you can truly make it to the top. Jeremy’s story really made me hope that he makes it back up there soon, because the dude seems like a genuinely nice guy. Unfortunately for Jeremy, he also has wants, needs, and desires just like any other red-blooded male, but again I’m getting a little ahead of myself…
GSP decides to take the guys over to the local YMCA for a different kind of workout. The guys have fun playing a little b-ball, swimming, and doing *gasp* underwater sprints (which are just as hardcore as they sound). During the day of fun, Jeremy meets a presumably hot lifeguard (whose face was blurred out for her own protection, or maybe Jeremy’s), and arranges for her to meet him in the back of the house at midnight. Jeremy remarks that the arrangement isn’t really all that sexual; he just wants a female to talk to. I think we’d all want a little female company after being stuck in a house full of dudes for a few weeks. Cut back to the house, several hours later. Jeremy’s big date is approaching, and the usually empty fire bit area is bustling like a Tokyo crosswalk. Murphy’s Law in action folks: whatever can go wrong will go wrong.

Despite this less than ideal situation, Jackson gets the guys to head back into the house. Jackson plays it smooth and goes off to “take a piss,” buts ends up hopping the fence to rendezvous with his mystery girl. A few commercials later, its 8:30am the next day and Rich Clementi picks up the phone to find that training has been postponed. Even worse news is that Dana is on his way. Word spreads faster than that damn staph infection, and soon everybody knows it was Jeremy, who is taking it pretty rough. Everyone is joking about Dana getting “medieval” on Jeremy’s fallus, but Jeremy knows that this really isn’t a laughing matter. Dana finally gets there and explains that what Jeremy did is “a clear violation of the rules.” Dana plays the “respect” card, and is sorely disappointed in not only Jeremy, but the whole crew. Due to his little mix up, Jeremy is sent home, and is officially off the show. Team No Love loses a great training partner, and we viewers miss out on a potentially awesome fight. I genuinely feel sorry for Jeremy Jackson, and the situation really sucks because this guy is a banger (in more ways than one apparently). He always comes to fight, has one hell of a left hook, and he’s one of the most exciting fighters on the show. One question came to me through the whole ordeal: How come every time Dana says “I don’t want to come here and give a big speech, but…” he’s already given a big speech? At least he did manage to keep the f-bombs to a minimum this time…well kinda. Kinda not really, that is.

With Jeremy gone the focus shifts back to the staph epidemic, which has spread like wildfire, infecting a large portion of the fighters in the house. This throws the proverbial feces in Team Mojo’s cereal, as two of their picks to fight this week are sick with staph. Pete Sell, who so badly wanted to fight Travis Lutter, has to put his beef on the backburner as Scott Smith is picked to fight Sell’s nemesis in his stead. Lutter looked a little nervous about being picked, and admits that he was very surprised to be fighting this week. Despite the somewhat negative comments, Lutter is a warrior who will have no problem rising to the occasion.
After the mandatory background checks, only one thing is for certain: “Scott Smith smells like shit, [and] the boy’s ass is stank,” or so says Din Thomas. Apparently Scott Smith is having the protein farts, and according to Scott he just can’t stop. We all get the protein farts sometimes, and it really can’t be helped. Damn you tuna! Maybe he can try to utilize his “atomic ass” in this week’s fight with Lutter. Once again, this is going to be another short fight. 10:50pm and the fight hasn’t started yet. Travis remarks that every time the cage door shuts, he thinks, “it’s a good day to die.” Smith just wants to “finish ya’ out.” We’ll see who gets finished in just a sec.

The bell rings, and the fighters feel each other out a little bit. Smith scores with a jab before Lutter rushes in for a takedown, which smith defends. Lutter quickly ducks under to get Smith’s back standing, before forcing Smith to the ground. Lutter then gets the hooks in and pounds on Smith a little bit. Lutter, who apparently didn’t want to beat up Smith too bad, works for the rear choke, and induces the tap at 3:47 of round 1. While Team No Love celebrates their first victory, Team Mojo and Scott Smith are very frustrated that Scott didn’t really get a chance to prove himself. I’ve witnessed a few of Smith’s fights live, and let me tell you that this guy is a beast. It’s really too bad we didn’t get a chance to see him work his game. Hopefully he can work his way back into the UFC so we can really see some fireworks.

A look at next week shows Team No Love playing mind games, but they are now faced with a tough decision: which defeated welterweight to bring back in Jeremy Jackson’s place. The cherry on top seems to be the feud (which I was largely unaware of) between Mickey Burnett and Shonie Carter, which reaches a boiling point on the next episode of……THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER!