Matthew Wrather fends off blond discrimination from the panel—Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, John Perich, and Jordan Stokes—as they overthink mocumentaries, ultimate fighting, and the return to grace of Michael Phelps.

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Download Episode 54 (MP3)

On paper, Never Back Down looked like a sure thing. Take The Karate Kid, replace karate with Ultimate Fighting™, replace Pat Morita with Djimon Honsou, throw in a bunch of crappy pop-punk and some PG-13 T&A… it should be a license to print money, right?

Not so much. Oh, it wasn’t a colossal flop or anything. They recouped their shooting costs with the US box office receipts, so the foreign markets and DVD release should put the production comfortably in the black. But I don’t think Hollywood is going to be banging down the writer’s door, hungry for more of that sweet sweet MMAsploitation.

People like The Karate Kid. People like remakes. (They don’t, actually, but they keep shelling out money to watch them, which amounts to the same thing.) So what went wrong?  Read my diagnosis after the jump, if’n you want.