The seventh episode of The Ultimate Fighter Nations picked up where the previous episode left off.
On the previous edition of the show, Team Australia became angered after word spread that Canada’s Kajan Johnson made disparaging remarks about Dan Kelly after he appeared to have suffered an injury in his loss to Sheldon Westcott.
Vik Grujic and Brendan O’Reilly confronted Johnson about his comments, but Johnson denied having made them and said that if anything, his words were taken out of context.
A replay of the events following the Kelly fight were then shown, and although Johnson was seen jumping up on the cage and exclaiming in support of his teammate’s victory, there was no footage shown of him saying anything negative about Kelly.
Kelly returned to the house and informed his teammates that the x-ray showed no fracture in his knee. Later on in the episode, more clarity about Kelly’s injury was discovered when a doctor informed him that he had suffered some tears in his meniscus, but that should only keep him sidelined for 4-6 weeks.
The fight scheduled for this episode is a welterweight match-up between Canada’s Olivier Aubin-Mercier and Australia’s Jake Matthews. As is this case for every episode of The Ultimate Fighter Nations, both contestants received a profile.
With Matthews, it was learned that the nineteen year-old picked up the sport after his friend took him to a kickboxing class, and that he is a well-rounded fighter who excels on the ground and with his conditioning.
Aubin-Mercier talked about how he was inspired to fight by former UFC Welterweight Champion George St. Pierre and that made the jump from a judo career to Mixed Martial Arts. He also went on to discuss how he is motivated to have success because of his two year-old daughter back home.
An intriguing development with the Canadian team is that the training sessions have developed more tension as more and more Canadians advance to the next round of the tournament. Instead of seeing one another as teammates, the fighters still in the mix began to develop into adversaries.
The episode took a light-hearted turn when Kyle Noke drove into the Ultimate Fighter gym in a real model of a car featured in the Forza Motorsport 5 video game. Noke told the fighters that they would all play the racing game at the house, and whoever recorded the fast time would win an Xbox One as well as a ride to the TUF gym inside the real car. Team Australia’s Chris Indich would end up winning the contest.
The weigh-ins go on without a hitch as both Aubin-Mercier and Matthews weigh in at 169 pounds.
Finally, the welterweight bout between Aubin-Mercier and Matthews took place. Aubin-Mercier used his grappling and strength to control Matthews on the ground throughout the fight and win a two round decision.
After being outpaced by his opponent early on in the first frame, the Canadian took down Matthews from the clinch and went to work inside the guard of the Aussie until the round’s time expired.
In the second period, an early takedown attempt from Matthews was defended by a kimura attempt from Aubin-Mercier and Matthews ended up on his back. From that point forward, Aubin-Mercier maintained a dominant position and spent a lot of time working for a rear-naked choke from the back of Matthews.
With the victory, Aubin-Mercier rounds out a welterweight field that features Kajan Johnson, Chad Laprise, and Richard Walsh.
The episode with the fight announcement of a middleweight bout between Canada’s Luke Harris and Australia’s Vik Grujic. The fight will conclude the preliminary round of the tournament, and the winner will join Sheldon Westcott, Tyler Manawaroa, and Elias Theodorou in the next leg of the middleweight bracket.