I'll admit I got nothing done this past saturday. I just watched the Ultimate Fighter marathon on Spike and drank my beer. By the way, I've become a big fan of Session Lager now. They come in these cool little stubby bottles - can you say Lucky Lager - and it's cheap to boot! What can I say there was a whole lot to love about the fights we saw the other night. Ed Herman and Kendall Grove gave us an absolute classic three round war. Bisping put on a clinic while Josh showed everyone there is no limit to the amount of heart he has. There's a lot to talk about so let's get down to it. I tuned in to catch the live internet pre-fight show on Spiketv.com for the east coast at 5:30 and all in all it was a pretty lame event. You had Griffin and Bonnar mugging for the camera, some annoying chick doing interviews but you did have a memorable appearance from Randy Couture. The Spike show was pretty much filled with ads for Blade and interviews with guys like Chuck Liddell, Chris Leben, and Randy Couture on who they thought would win the finals. About 30 or so minutes into the show, a little segment about Tito Ortiz finished up and Spike went back to the live feed with the cameras on Forrest Griffin, Stephan Bonnar, and Randy Couture. Obviously Randy didn't know that they were back on and we were treated to a nice little moment where we got to watch him gleefully say, "Who's the FUCKING PUSSY?" And without a beat Forrest Griffin responds with something like, "Well we're back on the air." Of course right then and there it was apparent to all three of them that everyone who was watching the live feed just heard what Randy had just said. Talk about awkward. Strangely enough, for some reason Spike decided not rebroadcast the internet pre-fight show at 8:30 for west coast audiences. Hmmmm I wonder why? You know if there's one thing that really bugged the living hell out of me about the finale: it was the amount of ads we were bombarded with that night. I know it's free fights so I shouldn't complain but in the span of three hours we got to watch a total of five fights. The amount of Blade promos we had to watch started to verge on the comical. If it wasn't a Blade commercial every three seconds, we had Goldberg and Joe Rogan constantly plugging the show and doing interviews with people no one cared about. And honestly, do you think that anyone who is a fan of MMA really cares about a Kung-Fu fighting Vampire? Message to the suits over at Spike TV: you should be promoting the UFC and MMA on the Blade show, and not the other way around. If it hasn't dawned on you guys yet, MMA is a lot bigger now than a tv show about some vampire superhero that peaked back in 1998. By the way that guy who's playing Blade, didn't he used to be a rapper for the group Onyx? Rogan pretends to be interested in Blade while interviewing the actor known as Sticky. But Blade wasn't the worst offender that evening. Nope that title rests in the hands of Xyience and honestly I'd really like to choke whoever was behind their marketing ploy. What they did was just insulting, not only to the sport of MMA but to the viewing audience as well. Listen Xyience, you guys have a stranghold on the UFC when it comes to ads. We get it already. Did you really feel the need to have a fighter plug one of your products right after the fight? Incase you missed it, it was right after the Jardine vs Gouveia fight. Right there in the middle of the ring with Joe Rogan beside him, what does Jardine have in his hand? A can of Xyience's new energy drink and if that's not bad enough, they have a big close up of him taking a big ol' swig out it. It was so scripted, awkward, and clumsy it litterally made me cringe. Keith Jardine does a plug for Xyience while Rogan pretends not to notice. At the end of that fight, it wasn't Jardine's face or legs that took the worst beating...it was his dignity. Ouch! It's a shame the Xyience people didn't stop there, they should have had a small child waiting for Jardine next to the Octagon door. And like the Coca Cola ad featuring Mean Joe Green, Jardine would have handed the small child his shorts covered in blood in exchange for a cool refreshing Xyience energy drink. There wouldn't have been a dry eye in the house. In part II, I'll be going over some of the fights while I drink an ice cold beer from Session Lager.