Episode 5 - Alain gets his rematch. Soren sends him home.

The Tiger Kings are on a lucky streak and emerged victorious once again. This time, both teams had to pull a truck at both ends and whichever team crosses his finishing line first, wins the challenge. The Tiger Kings were rewarded to a $500 shopping spree on eBay for their victory.

Zidov was pretty pissed off at the reward. He remarked that in his country, if you get rewarded $500 for pulling a truck, everyone will be pulling trucks all over the country for as long as they had to. Pretty true. These Contenders have been very pampered. Even the average Singaporean don't get to spend like this. Lucky guys. Zidov's from Switzerland by the way.

The Tiger Kings were pretty spontaneous in their deliberation this time round. Zach, Soren and Dzhabar wanted to fight. As a spanish tradition, as suggested by Pitu, three matchsticks were cut into different lengths and whoever draws the longest matchstick gets his fight. I don't know how it feels, sitting around the loft for weeks, months now actually, just to wait for your one fight. I would think it gets pretty frustrating and when the time comes, you want to get your fight over and done with. However, if you lose, you'd definitely miss days sitting around the loft doing nothing but training and eating. Something like a post-holiday nostalgia I think.

Well anyway, I am pretty impressed by the way Soren fights. No wonder the Thais say he's got talent and gave him the name Mongtongkong. He's a really technical guy. We don't see much power in his punches and kicks but when it comes to technique, he is way up there. Here is a video of Soren's previous fights.

He injured Alain with an elbow to his right forehead and the fight had to be stopped as the cut was too long and deep. The result was a technical knock out to Soren. Alain has got respect from his team mates to be a fighter who has a lot of mental power. Given his disease (Crohn's disease), Alain had to have 13 inches of his intestines removed. This sometimes affected his fighting capabilities but have duly helped to increase his threshold for pain. To be fair, Alain was sick for two weeks prior to his fight and it was impressive in itself to have been able to withstand that many knees to his stomach.

Each week it gets harder to see a Contender leave and I am even starting to feel sorry for the Wild Boars. It does have some effect on the show huh, now that Rafik is gone?

P.S: Video will be up in the next hour or two.