I know I have missed a few weeks, but let’s get caught up before the semi-finals.

So if you haven’t been watching, you have missed: the steady rise of Damarques Johnson as Team USA captain, Michael Bisping getting under his skin, Team UK getting along great and Team US’s feelings towards one another changing after every loss or win.

In Episode 5 Andre Winner from Team UK beat Santion Defranco in convincing fashion. Once the fight moved to the ground Santion turtled the same way he did in the qualifier, but this time Winner didn’t let up and the red stopped the fight in the 1st round.

Following this fight Team US’s morale was at an all time low, and when a fight almost broke out in the van after training, Henderson had to be called in to lay down the law as if they were children. In contrast to this, Team UK had a fun day playing on the trampoline back at the house.

The second fight of the episode was Damarques Johnson vs Dean Amasinger and in a weird twist, Bisping didn’t show up to corner Amasinger. Johnson won the fight with a triangle choke in the first round. If you recall from the elimination bouts, Dean was almost caught in a triangle repeatedly in his fight.

Hendo felt that Bisping missed the fight because he knew Dean would lose, it turns out he slept through it due to his lingering jetlag.

One of the bigger growing trends is the editor’s enjoyment of ironic foreshadowing, and we received a double helping in episode 6. First we saw Cameron Dollar depicted as a terrified ball of nerves when preparing for his fight against Martin Stapelton. Stapleton was depicted as the ultra prepared UK marine, so of course Cameron took his back and finished it with a rear naked choke in the first round.

The second fight was Frank Lester vs James Wilks. We got to find out that Frank Lester is pretty much out of his mind. In the van Damarques tells Lester that for every one of Wilks teeth knocked out, he will give him $100.00.

This of course leads to a wonderful moment in the fight where James Wilks knocks a few of Lester’s front teeth out with a knee. The real beauty of this moment was hearing the ref tell Lester’s corner to “put the teeth on ice”. Wilks finished the fight in the second round with an armbar.

Episode 7 was the silliest episode of a season that has been refreshingly focused on the training and fights. We saw Jason Pierce continue to pout around the house, Henderson beat Bisping at tennis and David Faulker managed to hit himself in the leg with a sledgehammer while training.

In the fight, Ross Pearson defeated Richie Whitson in the first round with an armbar.

The Jason Pierce pout train rolled continued rolling into Episode 8 last week, as he complained of a staph infection and gave vague reasons from several doctors about why he probably shouldn’t fight. Pierce’s attitude and lack of cooking (along with Jason Dent) caused some friction in the house among Santino and Lester.

The fight was between Jason Dent and Jeff Lawson, and Lawson was prominently featured as a fun guy who kept his teammates entertained, while Dent kept to himself and couldn’t stand living in the house.

In perhaps the sloppiest fight of the season, Jason Dent submitted Lason with an Anaconda choke (or gator roll, or Nog choke, whatever you want to call it) in the second round.

Pre fight Dana met with Jason Pierce about his staff infection and Pierce showed no enthusiasm while stating that he was “mentally able to fight”. Dana didn’t buy it and let him know after Dent vs Lawson that he wouldn’t be fighting. Pierce was upset, but it was far too little too late.

Episode 8 made Bisping look like a bit of a child. In fact while they were arguing over Hendo’s supposed right to change training times, Dan compared his behavior to how his kids act when they don’t get their way. Bisping actually squirted Damarques in the face with a water bottle after the training time argument, tried to accuse him of a racist comment that Cameron actually made (white as a band-aid? Who does that offend?) and then had to try and apologize.

Team US wasn’t shocked when they heard that Pierce couldn’t fight, and Santino made the episode when he compared Pierce with Piggy from Lord of the Flies. Luckily, despite missing some teeth, Frank Lester was cleared to fight Dave Faulkner and Dana was stoked on his fighting spirit. In fact Dana had the second best moment of the episode when he explained that normal people don’t want to fight after getting their teeth knocked out, and that’s what earned Lester the second chance.

This was the best Hendo episode so far. He stayed calm and kind of funny when arguing with Bisping, and kept poking at Lester’s wrecked nose for what seemed to be his own amusement. His final motivation for Lester pre-fight was the fact that it couldn’t turn out as bad as the last one.

The fight itself was kind of rough, Faulkner was obviously bugged by his mouth guard (despite the hypnotherapy earlier in the episode) and Dent was pretty beat up. But they still managed to win a round each, Faulkner wouldn’t get out of his corner to start the third though and the fight went to Frank Lester.

So that’s what you’ve missed, the show is tied at 4 – 4. Come back Wednesday night when I resume weekly columns going into the semi-finals, and as always you can follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/RaysMMAThoughts. Trust me, it’s good times.