Saturday in Las Vegas, season six of "The Ultimate Fighter" closes out its final chapter on SpikeTV when welterweights Mac Danzig (Pictures) and Tommy Speer meet to decide who will be the newest "Ultimate Fighter."
In contrast, Danzig is a seasoned vet of the sport with double the fights of his opponent. He has been battling all sorts of tough guys in small shows for years and has even taken his name past the association it has with a certain punk/metal rock legend.
While much has been made of Speer's humble farming roots in a small town in Minnesota that has less than a thousand names in its phone book, Danzig's hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, isn't exactly Paris. Both bring a blue-collar work ethic to their games that make them easy to admire.
In preparation for this fight, Danzig has been working at the Xtreme Couture camp in Las Vegas along with names like Maynard, Horodecki, Alessio and Trigg -- a who's who of training partners that have helped him work on his standup and wrestling. He knows what he'll be up against and hopes to steer Speer into his strengths.
"I just got to play my game," Danzig said.
Speer left his farm, where he typically trains around chores. "I went down to Hughes' camp and just focused on my training and not milking cows," he said.
Before his stint on TUF, Speer was 9-1. It's scary to think of what skills he's picked up during that time.
Fighting a training partner and housemate always makes for a strange dynamic, but Speer isn't worried about that.
"I'll fight my best friend if that's what it takes to prove myself," he said.
Danzig is aware of Speer's smoldering potential, though.
"Not everybody improved technically, but I saw Tommy get better from the first day he was on the show to the last day," Danzig said. "He improved greatly, so I expect him to be a much better fighter even now."
Both men will have the opportunity of a lifetime tonight, but the ramifications will be different depending on the outcome. For Speer, the matchup has a fairly simple scenario. Win, and he's the new TUF darling. Lose, and he'll be given the benefit of the doubt by the media and by most fans since he's still new and losing to Danzig isn't a blight in the record books.
Danzig faces a scenario with farther-reaching implications. He's not exactly a newbie and he lost his first "big league" outing in a PRIDE show in February to Hayato Sakurai (Pictures) (not exactly a blight either, but he will have some pressure to perform well).
Should Danzig win, it will show that he can not only beat a heavier and stronger opponent, but it should sound an alarm to the 155-pound community, considering that Danzig seems committed to drop back down after this fight. With a dominant win over Speer, Danzig's name could almost immediately be inserted into arguments about title contention.
Danzig will also get a chance to clean the slate with some fans that didn't warm to him after SpikeTV editors were able to piece together a convincing case that he's a "dark cloud" personality surrounded by negativity. Funny how it works, but victories always have a way of winning the hearts and minds.
Not that Danzig is all that concerned about people's perceptions. "Yeah, I mean, I guess I was kind of grumpy, but whatever," he said. "The show's over, so I can go back to being a normal person."
Living in a house with a bunch of dudes could make anyone grumpy. Should Danzig win the six-figure contract, he'll be able to buy a lot of birdhouses to cheer him up.
This season of "The Ultimate Fighter" couldn't end fast enough for Matt Hughes (Pictures). His team fared horribly against his nemesis, Matt Serra (Pictures), who coached to a 6-0 run at one point. Hughes got the final laugh, however, as his two winning fighters have now made their run into the finals.
Hughes will watch Danzig, who easily submitted his opponents en route to the finals, and Speer, who battled through a bad cut in his first fight, escaped a scary submission in the second and finally knocked out Serra's top dog in the semifinals.
"This is a good test for both fighters," said Hughes, who out of respect for his fighters won't be cornering either. "Tommy is going to walk into the Octagon and say that power is going to win over technique, and Mac is going to walk in the Octagon and say technique is going to win over power. So this is the age-old battle. I'll just get to sit back and watch."