It’s crunch time for Miss USA this week on Tough Enough as she trains one on one with Bill after hours and the pressure is on for her to finally start performing. Meanwhile the top dogs are established in the skills challenge, we get an appearance from Hall of Famer Brett Hart and the contestants go roller skating!
Rima and Ryan Return… Again
Christina rejoices to see Rima has survived elimination but voices surprise that she did. When Ryan arrives back Rima goes insane and throws her arms around him while the others remark on how surprised they are, with AJ stating he’s glad Mickael got sent home because he considered him greater competition. Ryan gets revenge on Mickael’s bed-ruining prank by stripping his rival’s sheets and claiming the bed as his own.
Again, I like these little opening segments as they tie the episodes together.
Rima’s One on One Training
Bill acts like he wasn’t aware he’d be training Rima even though she asked him for it on camera last week. It’s midnight and Rima calls it a date but Bill quickly shoots Miss USA down. First she has to roll over a bag in the middle of the ring without touching it but repeatedly rolls too early. At least she’s not face-planting anymore. She then takes about 20 bumps, all of them pretty poor and Bill calls an end to things, remarking on how physically shaken she was. Despite shooting down the idea of it being a date Bill makes things pretty romantic by sitting in the middle of the ring with her while they have a heart to heart. Rima finally lets herself cry on camera as Bill tells her she has a lot of guts but it’s smarts that keep you in a competition. She completely loses it, fighting to get words out of her mouth. She says she doesn’t want to quit or be sent home but continues to cry. She can’t even keep it together for a to-camera interview afterwards.
You know I’m not exactly her biggest fan but you can’t deny her determination and desire to actually go far in this contest, she just doesn’t have a lick of wrestling ability and you’d have to be inhuman to not feel for someone while they cry their eyes out.
Bret Hart Drops By
Austin has everyone gather in the ring and brings out one of his favourite opponents and one of the best technicians of all time: Bret ‘The Hit-Man’ Hart. Luke calls it a dream come true as Bret talks about his 23 year career and how he prides himself on never injuring anyone. He says he wrestled as hard for a 500 person crowd as he did a 90,000-strong audience. He talks about being a fan first and how that drove him to be the best in the world. Ryan is an awe.
Another all-too-short appearance from a superstar but at least this time it was an effective minute or so of TV time and Bret spoke from the Hart. Get it?
Daily Training: In-and-Outs
Bret Hart dropped the word agility into his speech in a very deliberate fashion so you knew they’d be working on that this week. Austin talks about how important it is to be able to move in the ring and Bill walks them through their drill: the in-and-out. They stand in a corner with both hands on the top ropes and vault to the apron, back in, out to the other side and back in. They must repeat this five times per corner. Yeesh.
Andy admits his agility sucks as we see him going very slowly and catching the rope each time over. Ryan gets heckled with the Skid-Marks name again but does a reasonable job. Martin excels with Bill calling his performance text-book, though he tires as things go on. Eric’s conditioning is still terrible and thus Bill tosses him from the ring early. AJ can’t quite get the knack of it and goes slowly. Ivelisse is too short and has to take a step off the bottom rope. Rima needs to do the same and this is ok with Trish as she encourages them both to do so but they still struggle. Christina does very well and is proud of her agility. Luke matches Martin’s performance and slightly betters it by never hesitating. Jeremiah steals the competition by bunny hopping the top rope like it’s nothing.
Bill says Jeremiah and Luke were the only agile ones of the bunch, immediately forgetting Martin’s performance. Luke calls himself and Jeremiah the top dogs and says nobody else came prepared for the competition. Another decent evaluation of the competitors’ fitness and skills but I have a slight problem with it which you can read in the overall thoughts section.
Life Lesson: Agility
Nonsensically Bill has everybody meet him in the in-house gym so he can tell them to go get dressed into normal clothes and meet Trish. Where are they meeting her? At a Frisco’s. We don’t have those in the UK but I think I get the idea. They’ll be learning to serve food on roller skates. Marvellous.
AJ goes slow as heck and then falls on his rear. Eric – who had never skated before – falls almost immediately. Every single one of them either stumbles or falls but they’re then told they’re ready to do things for real in the restaurant. Andy forgets the name of the restaurant while Eric clutches a giant drink like his life depended on it. Bill walks in and joins Trish at a table to laugh at them. Ryan shows off by doing a little spin as he reaches the table. Rima says she enjoyed the experience. They’re then assembled to perform a dance routine and it’s cringe-tastic once again. Eric falls and breaks a chair but laughs it off.
They’re certainly determined to humiliate the guys and girls to make good reality television, and they’re achieving that side of things, but this is a wrestling show so I’d appreciate things a little more linked to that aspect of things.
Party Time
As a reward for completing their task they get free drinks and an excuse to party. Rima table dances and they all throw money at her. Not to be outdone Jeremiah removes his shirt and gives the owner a lap-dance and then points out how many older customers there were watching from a distance who did not approve. Andy is shown sitting in a booth alone with his hood up not drinking because he committed to be straight-edge throughout the contest so he could win. Christina and Rima try their hand at bar-tending and state they planned to get everybody drunk so they’d all fail the skills challenge together. Advantage Andy. This was a chance to let them all come out of their shells but it didn’t really do much for me, though it demonstrated Jeremiah’s personality quite well.
Skills Challenge
They’ll be starting in opposite corners, charging and then doing a sequence. What’s the sequence? Headlock, tackle, drop down, leap frog, hip-toss, cover. Martin and AJ begin and do pretty well bringing in Luke and Ivelisse. Not exactly a fair match up and Ivelisse stumbles a little but seems to do OK. Jeremiah and Andy go next and Bill calls their effort “nice”. I for one was impressed Andy could leapfrog given their heights. The bottom-three mafia Rima and Ryan are the next pair and Rima struggles, getting wiped out on the leapfrog despite Ryan ducking extra low to get under her. Bill yells at her when she tries to make excuses and is told to start again. She’s even more reluctant this time around, making Ryan look bad in the process. Trish wants them to go again but Austin eliminates her from the challenge.
Andy and Eric go next and Eric can’t leapfrog Andy’s large frame and gets headbutted in the chest and taken down. Bill screams at them both for stopping and Austin says he’s doing a lot right but a few things wrong and cuts him. AJ and Christina take a turn and she hesitates when it comes to the leapfrog so AJ helps her out by giving her a spinebuster. Austin cuts them both for breaking routine. Ryan and Ivelisse go next and once again a lady gets creamed trying to leap over Ryan. Austin cuts them both. Harsh. Trish comments on how the girls are sinking fast.
Martin and Jeremiah go next and Jeremiah tries and fails to do a kip-up, making the trainers laugh. Jeremiah appears to injure Martin on the hip-toss and gets cut. We’re left with Martin, Luke and Andy. After all three run the drill the trainers huddle up and honest to god I did not hear a word they said and I watched it twice. Andy gets cut and we come down to the overall top two competitors. Bill wants them to do the sequence until one of them quits. We’ll be here a while.
Things get weird as Bill has them do it topless and Martin does a little wiggle while undressing which Austin laughs about and says nearly got him cut. We join their run towards the end it seems as both are tired and Martin stumbles a couple of times but Bill points out Luke hesitates and that he’s selfish in the ring. Austin cuts him and Luke refuses to shake Martin’s hand. Martin wins two in a row and Luke demonstrates his arrogance by saying anybody with a brain knows he’s number one and he knows he outperformed Martin in the challenge. Just like the last time they were told to do actual wrestling sequences I enjoyed this tremendously because it’s fundamentally what they should be being tested on and it tells us flat out who the top competitors are.
Critique & Feedback
Eric and Rima express concerns that they will be in the bottom three again. Trish, Austin and Bill all compliment Martin and Bill points out Andy’s performance, calling those two and Luke the top three. Austin brings up Ryan and they wonder why he’s still here, failing to perform under pressure. When Trish compliments his car-hop abilities Austin says it may serve him well in the future. Sick burn. Austin says the girls did not impress him. Trish says Ivelisse is OK but trips up a bit. Bill says Christina is athletic but shies away from the physicality. Austin calls Rima and Jeremiah green as grass but while Jeremiah continues to impress Rima does not. Bill points out this is not a guy vs girl thing, she just is not good at all. Austin asks about the training session and Bill says it’s just not there in her and that everybody on the show is asked to do the same things. Trish doesn’t think she can take it, saying she did well with the roller-skating challenge and is a people person but the bottom line is she is not an athlete.
Rima is called forth and Austin stuns everyone by not naming another two, outright eliminating her from the competition. He calls her beautiful, smart and courageous but doesn’t feel she’s physically ready. She claims this isn’t fair and he once again compliments her on her heart and mental toughness but says her body is not game. She claims she’s tough and he says if she’s determined she’ll still make it but she won’t win Tough Enough. She says that’s fair and accepts her elimination.
Rima’s Elimination
Martin seems sorry that she’s going and hopes they’ll meet again and that she’ll keep at it. Christina and Rima hug it out. Luke says Rima always understood him and they toast a drink together. Just tell her you want to bang her bro. Trish sits down with her and says they’re a lot alike as she had to tear down people’s perception of what a model is.
She takes her belt to Austin and says she loves wrestling more now than she did on day one, which makes him smile. He tells her he’s glad she came on the show and says he thinks she has a future in the industry. Given the fact this would have been her third straight week in the bottom three and nobody else was terrible this week I think it was the right decision. But you can bet all the money in the world we’ll see her on WWE television, even if it’s in a managerial role. Furthermore it shook things up a little where the format is concerned and the others have to be on notice that they could be eliminated at any time from now on.
Next Week: Basketball versus dwarves, Ivelisse vs Christina leads to an injury, and Booker T kicks Ryan’s rear end.
Overall Thoughts
Rima’s training session was entertaining and made me feel sorry for her but this and her performances in the skills challenge exhibited precisely why she was in dead last. The I was glad to see Andy step out of the shadows and not only get some screen time but actually excel at some challenges and get named one of the top three. Bret Hart’s very short appearance was the most worthwhile since John Cena, and the life lesson about agility was… different. I’m not convinced roller skating is the best way to demonstrate you are agile enough to wrestle, and it spent a lot of time on the silly side of the line of sensibility, but there was something intrinsically amusing about seeing big tough wrestlers get humiliated in real world settings.
A quick rant though. Some of these challenges aren’t exactly fair. Eric and Andy are significantly larger than the other competitors and as such their strengths will be in other areas to the rest. This episode focused on agility and if you’re telling me you want your big men to be equally agile as your small guys then I think you’re kind of crazy. Could Kane, Big Show or the Great Khali do these drills? Of course not. Now sure, those three are much bigger than our Tough Enough giants but the point remains. Eric and Andy are never going to be able to leap-frog each other in a million years. The same goes for the ladies. I’m not a sexist, but the vast majority of women are unable to match male competitors in terms of athletic ability. Expecting the girls to go toe to toe with the men is doing them a disservice. To pretend all the divas on the current roster could cope with the Tough Enough training would be ludicrous. I’m all for these contestants having to pay their dues, but let’s not ignore the fact different things are asked of different sized wrestlers in the WWE. Did Layla and Alicia have to pay dues? Did Khali? No. They were scouted for how they look and some of the Tough Enough competitors were too.
Competitor Rundown
Martin has to be considered the leader of the pack after winning two straight weeks of challenges and carrying himself with more professionalism than Luke who continues to be physically impressive but with a very poor attitude. I liked Andy early on but he’s struggled to get screen time until now. It came at a good time because he’s begun to emerge as a potential contender to win the show with his impressive size and humble personality.
Jeremiah is scary athletic and has more charisma than a lot of guys who are on television right now. He still has some ways to go learning the actual wrestling side of things, but given his other gifts I’d say he’ll land himself at least an FCW contract to smooth his rough edges. AJ is still just… there. He’s not bad but he’s not outstanding either, and his decision to give Christina a spinebuster out of nowhere wasn’t the best one. Barring a melt-down he’ll outlast the bottom of the pack but doesn’t have a chance against the top dogs. My support of Eric due to his indie experience is wavering as his conditioning isn’t even close to improving and he’s somewhat clumsy. Still, he’s huge so just like Jeremiah he may be given the benefit of the doubt in the end, but I don’t like his chances of lasting to the end.
I’m glad Ryan beat Mickael last week and in the process he demonstrated more potential in two minutes than he has in the month he’s survived. But he’s fundamentally kind of goofy and given how much Bill dislikes him he’s probably got two weeks left if he’s lucky. Ivelisse has been the best girl in the competition from the very beginning but her tiny frame is not standing up to the competition very well so she’s looking worse than she is. Christina clearly only applied because she’s seen her sister can do it and thinks she can too, and clearly only got accepted because the WWE love the idea of having the Fox sisters on television together. I’m shocked she hasn’t flamed out already given how reluctant she is to actually wrestle and I’d cut her next if I had the power.
Plugs
– While we’re on the subject of the WWE why not take a look at a little break-down I did of the Draft? I run down every single move and discuss what it means for the wrestlers involved and both brands going forward.
– Evolve 8 has just been announced so why not check out a podcast I did with Jerome Cusson reviewing Evolve 7 two weeks ago?
– As always check out all our podcasts and articles and help support this site by telling your friends about us and sharing links, we really do appreciate it!