The 11th season of ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ started with some Yager and ended with a “Moneyshot”. Say what!?

The premiere episode began with a look at the newly remodeled TUF gym before we met this season’s young, hungry competitors. Dana White arrived with Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz and gave the good old expletive laden “So you wanna be a fighter” speech, this time choosing to really hammer home his main point of never leaving it in the hands of the judges, a phrase that also adorns the wall above the fighters’ dressing rooms. After last season and all the snooze fights, Dana is ensuring that we get much more exciting fights and he even added a new element to the contest just for that reason. This season will include a wild card fight between the two best performing fighters that lose, so as to encourage some “balls to the wall” brawls to excite the fans.With so much focus on making fast-paced, exciting fights, don’t expect this season to disappoint!

The fights started with Jamie Yager of Kings MMA totally picking apart American Top Team’s Ben Stark. Using mostly kicks, Yager quickly took Stark out of the fight before taking him out of the running via a brutal head kick KO.

Brad Tavares followed and showed finishing power himself as he destroyed the boyish looking Jordan Smith with his own highlight reel worthy KO.

Kris “Savage” McCray wasn’t able to show off his game or power that much except due to a well executed throw of his injuring the shoulder of opponent Cleburn Walker.

Then, we saw American Top Team’s Norman Paraisy getting blasted into quitting by James Hammortree. I mean he straight up quit. I hope he knows that this will ruin his career. I don’t mean damper it, I mean it will send him on a path to working the drive-thru at McDonald’s, a job he will most likely quit as well.

The next three fights were shown in highlight format with the very Canadian Nick “Promise” Ring scoring a solid victory, Kyle Noke, the former bodyguard of “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, beating up his opponent into a ridiculously bloody mess and the bald and bearded Court McGee inching out a narrow decision.

And then we had our fight of the night where Chris Camozzi and Victor O’Donnell put on a great show as the two went back and forth at a highly energized pace, trading blows and submission attempts over three rounds. The two went at it with the fury Dana had requested, leaving it all in the ring, but in the end O’Donnell was leaving the gym for a hospital to treat a broken orbital bone while Camozzi solidified his spot in the house.

After the fight of the night we got to see our Knockout of the Night by way of Kyacey Uscola just absolutely wrecking Roy Neary with a consciousness-stealing power punch.

A few more fights were shown in bits including a come from behind armbar win for Joe Henle, decisions for Rich Attonito and Josh Bryant and a nice TKO victory for the short and stocky Charles Blanchard via ground and pound.

That lead us to the last fight of the night, a pairing of two friends in Clayton “Moneyshot” McKinney and Charley Lynch. Both knew it was all business and once the bell rang, they didn’t hold back. McKinney stood out with solid striking and some nice takedowns, taking the early lead before severly breaking Lynch’s nose. McKinney even stopped mid-fight and commented on his friend’s mangled nose. He quickly snapped back into fight mode and dropped a couple bombs that dropped Lynch. In the end, “Moneyshot” McKinney made a mess on his opponent’s face.

I expect big things this season and much more excitement than the last as evidenced by the fact that there was more action in the first 10 minutes of TUF 11 than the whole season of TUF 10 had to offer.