Deep breaths. Calm. Calm. The cream will rise. The weak will perish. Justice will be served. Deep breaths. Calm. Calm. The cream will rise. The weak will perish. Justice will be served. Deep breaths…
NINJA VS. NINJA 1 - PLAYOFF #2
It’s been a while, so here are the 3rd and 5th obstacles again (which in all likelihood will remain the same to the end).
3rd obstacle: Parallel Pipes - A ring is attached to a pole via a short chain (same as the one used in Ring Swing). The competitor must swing over to a hanging horizontal cylindrical beam (“pipe”) and then a second lower-hanging beam before dismounting.
5th obstacle: Hanging Staircase - An uphill climb across a series of short, thick rectangular rods, a hand-over-hand across a fixed horizontal ladder, and a descent across a second series of rods. There is one set of rods for each competitor on the ascent but a shared set on the descent.
Labreckfast Club (6-0) - Chris Digangi, Jesse “Clubhouse” Labreck, Jon Alexis Jr.
Frostbite (8-4) - Nick Hanson, Zhanique Lovett, Jackson Meyer
Team Wolfpack (6-4) - Ian Dory, Jeri D’Aurelio, Dan Yager
Phoenix Force (6-3) - Michael Torres, Cassie Craig, Najee Richardson
= Elimination match 1: Labreckfast Club vs. Frostbite =
__L: Digangi vs. Hanson - Digangi makes an uncharacteristic mistake on Sonic Swing, getting turned around on the second rope, and he’s soon looking at a big gap. Hanson is fast and clean through Tick Tock, then gets right on the ring and makes a smooth transition to the first pipe. Digangi tries to close the gap…and misses the pipe. And that seals it; Hanson gets through the remaining tasks effortlessly. Past success don’t matter in the second season, bucko! Hanson/finish 0-1
__W: Labreck vs. Lovett - Is “too hot to melt and too cold to freeze” an actual saying? No way in hell am I trusting Bodge on this. It’s almost dead even up to the pipes. Clubhouse reaches for the second with her right arm, while Lovett wraps her legs around it. The latter method is easier on the arms but requires a keen sense of balance and timing on the dismount. Which Lovett does not have, as she spins forward out of control and barely manages to hang on. Clubhouse almost casually hops through the tiles; Lovett trying to regain ground, whiffs on the second solo (another one!), takes a ton of water, and falls even further behind. Damn, I know a lot of women’s heats are hard to watch, but this is the first time I’ve seen it with two good ones. The rest is academic, Clubhouse finishing the stairs and sauntering up the wall without a care in the world. Labreck/finish 1-1
__A: Alexis Jr. vs. Meyer - Portland sounds like a nice place for a vacation. 
Meyer falls on the Tick Tock exit, allowing Alexis to get to the pipes first. Meyer doesn’t get a good swing and needs a second, while Alexis has no trouble reaching for the second and dismounting, then cleanly skipping through the tiles, and that’s all she wrote for this as a contest. Bodge astutely says that it’s a walk in the park for Alexis, but then follows up by noting how Alexis is “using all 78 inches out there”. While he’s on Hanging Staircase. Which does not use the lower body at all. So close, Bodge…so, so close… 
Alexis Jr./finish 2-1
And since Eyes can’t allow his partner to hog all the blithering idiocy, he kicks off the relay with “And it looks like the women will take the first leg.” Looks like? Looks like?? Hey, news flash: the women have taken the first leg IN EVERY SINGLE FREAKING RELAY THE ENTIRE FREAKING COMPETITON. Is there one microscopic subatomic iota of doubt that the women are going to start it off because no one ever ever ever ever ever ever ever puts them anywhere else? Geeeeeezzzzzzzzz…
__R1: Labreck/Alexis Jr./Digangi vs. Lovett/Hanson/Meyer - Absolutely nothing of note continues to happen in the first leg. Hanson fares better against Alexis than his partner recently did, actually getting to the second pipe first, but Alexis has a firm grip on the other end and Hanson can’t get a clean swing, then Alexis gets right on the second pipe and dismounts. Pretty slick move from a man who was supposed to have nothing going for him besides size! Hanson charges hard to catch up on the tiles, which generally spells disaster for at least one of the competitors, and this time it’s Hanson who’s cut down by the fickle hand of physics, completely missing the second solo and taking a dive. And that’s the nail in the coffin; you give Digangi five extra seconds to do two obstacles and you’d may as well not even bother. Labreckfast Club/finish 3-1
LABRECKFAST CLUB WINS
Once the pressure of keeping up a perfect record was gone, Labreckfast Club left no doubt whatsoever as to who was the better team. As for Frostbite, not much to say, really. I said before that this would be essentially a practice run for next year, and that’s pretty much how it turned out. They have nothing to be ashamed of; they’re just a good team that got bested by a great team. (Man, these parallels to the NBA just keep cropping up, don’t they? :)) They’ll be back, and they’ll weed out plenty of weak, undeserving, useless teams. Count on it.
= Elimination match 2: Team Wolfpack vs. Phoenix Force =
In his team’s preview, Ian Dory says “We didn’t come here for second place.” Checking my records, I see that the first incarnation of this team, Team Midoryama, was knocked out in the individual heats in the final, while the second, Mega Crushers, went out in the individual heats of the prelims. By my reckoning, that works out to fifth and dead last. It’s good to have confidence, but one rung at a time, okay, buddy?
And astonishingly enough, Dory is the less stupid-sounding anchor, as Najee Richardson opens his team’s preview with this howler: “The Phoenix Force has everything required to win this competition.” Really. After Cassie Craig all but took a sledgehammer to his kneecaps. He said that. With a completely straight face. There’s denial, and there’s freaking dementia.
Hahhhhh…fine, let’s get this over with…
_L: Dory vs. Torres - Both men get off to a blazing start, with Torres having a slight lead after two. He’s the first to the first pipe, but Dory’s faster on the transition and pulls ahead. Torres falls on the dismount, and Dory surges ahead. Torres, warrior to the end, midhops like a champ and closes the gap, but that’s as close as he’d ever get as Dory is the first to the stairs and never looks back. Damn, check out his face on the pipes and at the top of the wall; he looked like he was running for his life out there! Dory/finish 1-0
__W: D’Aurelio vs. Craig - D’Aurelio takes a small lead going into Tick Tock. Craig holds on to the pendulum from the side and is clumsy on the exit, landing flat on her back, and yes, it’s really goddam depressing that that’s easily her best result here ever. D’Aurelio is the first to the ring and smoothly handles the pipes, while Craig does a funny middle kick and fails to come within a home run derby of making the transition. D’Aurelio…who, I remind you, is 3-4 all time, with her most recent defeat coming after she ran over the fricking trampoline…is absolutely blowing the doors off her opponent. Craig keeps on swinging and promptly throws yet another embarrassment onto the pile as her left shoe comes off. (Nice shot of it floating placidly on the surface of the water.) The action skips ahead, apparently because even Eyes and Bodge can only take so much, and sure enough, D’Aurelio has completed Hanging Staircase before Craig has even started Floating Tiles. Well, just one thing left to do to make this utter demolition complete, beeh…and D’Aurelio fails go get over on her first attempt! Huh. Bodge obligingly flogs the horse race narrative with “Cass can still get back in this one!” and literally right then she slips right off of the stairs. Didn’t even make it to the ladder, for crying out loud. Does it count as a “jinx” if it doesn’t have a chance in hell of happening to begin with? D’Aurelio/distance 2-0
__A: Yager vs. Richardson - Damn, I have never felt more pity for an ANW competitor than I do for Richardson. He gets off to a blazing start, but the burden of carrying the whole world on his back finally becomes too much; he takes water on Sonic Swing and gives up the lead. He’s briefly even on the pipes, but Yager slips right through and gets back in front. The end comes soon after when Richardson misses the second solo to the right (That tile’s a monster, I tell you! :D), can’t save himself on the cables, and hits bottom. Yager/distance 3-0
“Oh, you were too hard on her! She’s not that bad! She’s just had one awful night!” Well, make that two awful nights. And you know what the worst part is? Had this gone to relays, Phoenix Force may have had a pretty good chance. Torres was stellar in the 8th prelim and kept it close against an even more stellar Dory, and Richardson was, if you can imagine, even scarier than Joe Moravsky. Had they been able to pit two against two, strength against strength, we could have seen a much different story. But you could tell that the constant, horrific burden of a completely useless woman just plain broke Richardson, and once Torres came up short, there was no hope. A complete waste of one of the finest efforts we will ever see in team competition. YOU SUCK, CRAIG! :mad:
Team Wolfpack now has three wins, but none of them were against a true favorite, and now they have to get past a steaming juggernaut to get to the final. And…I see we’re at the 40 minute mark, and this after the show started at 3, so there’s a good chance they’re going to at least take it the distance. Could there be a massive upset brewing?
= Sectional final: Team Wolfpack vs. Labreckfast Club =
__L: Dory vs. Alexis Jr. - Right off the bat Alexis starts out on the wrong foot…literally, as his left foot catches water on Sonic Swing. We’ve seen how easy it is to slip off of Zig Zag Climb; this could be a bad omen. Dory take the lead and sets a brisk pace through Tick Tock and Parallel Pipes while Alexis struggles to keep pace. Two more obstacles go by before Dory finally begins to slow down. Alexis has nearly caught up at the top of Salmon Ladder. (I gotta say it: After seeing so many full-course runs get cut short by dumb mistakes or ineptitude, it’s thrilling to see two men battle hard from start to finish.) They’re still setting a good pace through Rumbling Dice. Alexis is just a bit stronger on pure upper-body tasks, and he’s even at the end…and…he dismounts first! And now Dory, who looked so good up to this point, now has his back to the wall; any outcome on Zig Zag Climb other than him hitting the buzzer first results in an L. They begin. It’s tight. They get halfway up the first uphill. It’s super tight. Dory reaches the first downhill…and that damn wet left shoe sabotages Alexis at the worst possible time; he’s come to a halt and is struggling just to stay on. So now the question is…c’mon, Dory’s looked rock-solid through eight, he’s not going to collapse now. Dory makes it official a few seconds before gravity and traction loss finally drag Alexis to the mat. Dory/finish 1-0
__W: D’Aurelio vs. Labreck - Completely out of the blue, Eyes remarks that no woman has ever completed this extended course. Normally I’d dismiss this as more of his completely idiotic pointless rambling, but given that Clubhouse, thus far the only woman who’s completed Rumbling Dice, is competing…he could be on to something. (Which upgrades it to largely idiotic pointless rambling. :D)
D’Aurelio has a slight lead through two. They reach the first pipe at the same time, and you figure this is the point where one of them makes a stupid completely preventable blunder and kills this dead early and leaves us smacking our foreheads. And here it comes; Clubhouse is through, while D’Aurelio makes an absolutely brain-dead dismount, releasing the pipe while she’s swinging backwards, which works exactly as well as you’d expect. She’s in the water and…okay, not dead yet, she still has her arms on the landing area, but we all know…and she’s fighting hard and still hasn’t touched bottom. But she can’t get out, and we all know it’s only a matter…SHE GOT OUT! SHE GOT OUT! IT’S NOT OVER YET!
But she’s now soaking wet, so it’s only a matter of time before reality catches up to her, definitely no later than Warped Wall. Meanwhile, Clubhouse is on cruise control, over a full obstacle ahead and probably wondering just how long it’ll take for her opponent to accept her utterly inevitable defeat. D’Aurelio takes a cautious approach through the tiles and is through without a hitch. Clubhouse calmly runs up the wall, takes a look back, and proceeds to the latter third. D’Aurelio makes it through Hanging Staircase and sizes up the wall. In vain, of course, because…SHE’S UP ON THE FIRST ATTEMPT! THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE! THIS IS JERI D’AURELIO, DANGIT, NOT JESSIE GRAFF!
Meanwhile, Clubhouse has taken a long time to get going on the ladder, and she’s only halfway up before she sees her opponent, unbelievably, arrive over the wall and tell her that her work isn’t finished. Clubhouse, no doubt completely mindblown but nonetheless determined to show everyone who the boss still is, gets started on the first die. She’s making good progress, while D’Aurelio, who probably never thought she’d have that much work, is faltering on the ladder. She’s still on it by the time Clubhouse dismounts.
Ootdia (you remember what that is, right? ;)). Clubhouse has been pushed harder than any woman has ever been pushed on TNW or NVN, but she can make it all worth it by reaching that precious buzzer. She sizes up Zig Zag Climb. She takes some deep breaths. She sees D’Aurelio making her way across the dice and knows she can’t wait forever. She begins.
She’s got it. History made, another milestone set. And she made it look easy. Wow. 
And to cap it off, D’Aurelio nearly completed Rumbling Dice. She was right there at the end and just didn’t have enough for the dismount. Labreck/finish 1-1
__A: Yager vs. Digangi - Yager has a slim lead to the first pipe. Digangi makes the transition and goes for the quick dismount…he’s off balance and falls backward!..and just manages to stay dry. Definitely do not like these kind of big risks on the extended course; he got away with one here. He takes too long to get back in gear and Yager retakes the lead, then extends it on the stairs. Yager is the first on Salmon Ladder and has fine form, while Digangi gets crooked. He’s been game but looks like he could be running out of obstacles…and Yager’s slowing down! Incredibly enough, the rock climber is losing ground on upper-body obstacles. And Digangi passes him on the second die! And he dismounts first! AND YAGER’S RIGHT FOOT HITS THE WATER ON THE DISMOUNT! That’ll do it; Digangi, knowing that he has the advantage, can take the time to catch his breath and make it a sure climb, while Yager is completely unable to get any purchase with that right shoe and can do nothing but stare and seethe. Digangi/finish 1-2
This one looks all but over; Labreckfast Club is flying high and looks like it has no weaknesses. But the relay is a much different beast than the individual battles of attrition, and Team Wolfpack has shown some fast feet tonight, so the huge upset is still possible. That and we’re only at the 57 minute mark, so you know it can’t end here. 
__R1: D’Aurelio/Yager/Dory vs. Labreck/Digangi/Alexis Jr. - A bad start for the underdogs as D’Aurelio makes an awkward landing out of Tick Tock then misses on the first ring swing. Clubhouse is as consistent as ever and gives Digangi a huge jump. He still way ahead when he hits the buzzer. Upper-body blasters aren’t Alexis’ strength, and since you already know Labreckfast Club is losing this one, you can imagine how. Dory, with the advantage of starting fresh, tears up the ladder and manhandles the dice, and he’s nearly even at the dismount area. Alexis dismounts first, and now it’s make or break for Dory. He blazes up Zig Zag Climb…and there it is. Alexis loses his footing and stalls…AGAIN…and Dory easily sprints to glory. To add insult to injury, Alexis falls a second time. Team Wolfpack/finish 2-2
All right, Jesse Labreck, Chris Digangi. The big guy failed to finish the job for what seems like the 25th time. You thought he’d gotten past his bad old habits. He clearly hasn’t. He may be the worst clutch performer in the history of this event. It’s best of one with a trip to the finals on the line and no more second chances. Do not give him the third leg again. Repeat, do not give him the third leg again. One more time, just to be sure: Do not give him the third leg again. Here, let me put it really, really slowly just to be absolutely sure. Do. Not. Give. Him. The. Third. Leg. Again. Y’know what, since his confidence isn’t very high right now, I’d go a step further and not give him any upper body work whatsoever. That’s right, you should put him in the first leg. I’m not kidding. Clubhouse can go second, and Digangi third. I don’t see why this wouldn’t work; Clubhouse handled 4-6 just fine and Digangi is by far the best in the latter third. But no matter what, the one thing you absolutely cannot do is give him the third leg again. Got it? Do not give him the third leg again. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE LET THERE BE ONE TEAM IN THIS COMPETITION THAT LEARNS FROM ITS MISTAKES!
Haaaahhh. All right…
(Good lord, do the announcers really need to keep making up super-corny names for things that already have perfectly acceptable terms? Does anyone think “KO relay” is better than “best of one” or even “deciding heat”?)
__R2: D’Aurelio/Yager/Dory vs. Alexis Jr./Digangi/Labreck (MMDOTN) - :eek:
Holy…a team actually made the adjustment? After what seemed like 10 years of the status quo running wild?? Hot DAMN, there’s some hope for this miserable, pathetic planet yet! :D:D:D:D:D I still think Digangi and Clubhouse’s positions should’ve been reversed, but this is nearly as good. I gotta say, taking on an upper-body powerhouse like Dory, even with what’s probably going to be a big lead, takes serious guts. This has got to be the boldest move I’ve ever, ever seen in team competition.
Eyes and Bodge imply that Clubhouse taking the final leg was her decision, and I’m completely convinced that it had to be. No man in his right mind is going to give the two upper body-one total body leg to the lady. Hell, some of them would be lucky to freaking get on Salmon Ladder. This is huge folks. Let’s me be quite clear: Clubhouse’s butt is on the line. If she collapses against Dory, she will never, never ever hear the end of it. In the third USA vs. The World, we saw Jessie Graff make a horrible blunder on the very first obstacle and Drew Dreschel basically bet his soul that it was a fluke and she would redeem herself in Stage 2, a bet that paid off in one of the most jaw-dropping triumphs by a woman ANW has ever seen. Now what many are considering Graff’s biggest rival just stepped up, looked the dragon in the eye, and said “I got this.”
Good Sagume, this has been an unbelievable night!
And they’re off! And…that’s not exactly an impressive lead. Alexis manages the pipes well and makes the tag while D’Aurelio is still on the first, but this is not the kind of start you want when you pit a 6’6” man against a woman. (And might I add, D’Aurelio has been nothing short of impressive tonight.) Yager gets the tag and immediately takes off. Eyes says that Digangi only has about a 4-second advantage, which is very bad news for his team’s chances. Yager is keeping up on the stairs…and he falls off and into the water! Just another one of those completely inexplicable drops where you can replay it in slo-mo 10 times and still have no idea how it happened.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Were it Digangi on the third leg, game over. I don’t care if he’s up against Daniel Gil, he’s not blowing a 5-second lead. But it’s Clubhouse…a woman, who’s never going to be as formidable in the upper-body department as a capable man (and Dory’s been far more than capable tonight)…so this just got down to the wire.
Here we go. Clubhouse powers up the ladder. She gets crooked at the end but still manages to reach for the die. Dory gets on the ladder and gets crooked near the top as well but immediately corrects it. Clubhouse is at the midpoint of Rumbling Dice by the time Dory begins. Oh man, it’s going to be tight. Clubhouse briefly gets reversed but still dismounts first. Dory, near the end, is taking way too long to dismount. Clubhouse is on Zig Zag Climb, and for the second time tonight Dory can only win by becoming king of the mountain. He’s on…he’s…
** FLOOOOFFF **
(Um, that’s like ** SPLOOOOSHH **, except it a plummet to a thick padded mat instead of water. May or may not use it again.)
…off! Dory goes down! Dory goes down! And with the double dip (dang, it’s been a while since we’ve had one of those), Team Wolfpack’s upset bid collapses, and Clubhouse has yet another highlight for her ever-burgeoning reel. (Oh, more historical trivia: she’s the first woman in team competition to hit three buzzers in one day.) Labreckfast Club/distance + finish 2-3
LABRECKFAST CLUB WINS
In the postmatch interview, Clubhouse is so delirious with elation that she can barely get the words out. Digangi freely admits that they let her have the spot because she was the best on Zig Zag Climb. This, my friends, is a team with open eyes, clear heads, and checked egos, and that is a tough, tough combination to beat.
(Wonder how many kinds of crap Dory is going to catch for “losing to a girl” from out-of-shape do-nothing loudmouth slobs who’d collapse into a gasping heap about halfway through Sonic Swing. I’d put the over/under at 6.)
Matchup of the day: D’Aurelio/Labreck. Before it even ended, I knew this would be it. An epic battle between the reigning champ and the embattled, gutsy underdog who flat-out refuses to quit. This completely washed out the horrible bitter taste in my mouth from all the execrable women’s heats I had to endure to this point. This is what it’s all about, folks. This is what makes sports worth it.
MVP: Labreck. Remember how I said earlier that the women would make a difference this time? She proved it tonight in the most spectacular way possible. It says a lot that in a night where Digangi, Alexis, Yager, and Dory were all very good (and D’Aurelio; let’s not forget), the playoff belonged to her. Right now it doesn’t look like there’s any woman who can beat her, and that bodes very well for Labreckfast Club’s chances of rising from disappointment to total victory.
Wow. Damn.
