Get everything that happened in the last twenty-four hours with today’s edition of The Daily MMA review with notes from the latest episode of The Ultimate Fighter Brazil 3, UFC Fight Night in New Zealand, and more.
TUF Brazil 3 Recap
The eighth episode of the season started off with Marcio Junior, a middleweight contestant that became the first member on Chael Sonnen’s team to win a fight on the last episode, returning to the house with a cast on his left foot. He injured it in his victory over Team Silva’s Paulo Costa, but he won’t know the seriousness of the injury until he gets it examined.
That was followed by Wanderlei Silva picking the next heavyweight fight (Silva has the fight pick because his squad won control of it in a team competition to close out the last episode), which ended up pitting his own Antonio Branjao against Sonnen’s Vitor Miranda.
The fight selection frustrated Miranda since he’s a close friend and teammate of Branjao, and Team Sonnen assistant coach Vinny Magalhaes brought up an interesting point that Silva, who made the fight selection, was upset at Vitor Belfort in season one of TUF Brazil for pitting Rony Jason against Anistavio Medeiros, who were teammates at the time. Silva made his rebuttal by saying that Jason and Medeiros were much closer friends than Branjao and Miranda.
At a Team Sonnen training session, Chael brought in Yushin Okami to do some heavy sparring with his squad. The lone introduction that Okami had was a fifteen second clip of him inside the octagon with a sound over tape of Bruce Buffer introducing his name and one of Chael’s fighters mentioning that he was a longtime UFC fighter and judo expert.
The teams would go on to compete against one another in a team competition. The rules of the game were that six members of each time would be responsible for holding up three planks each, and ring card girls would walk on the planks while the fighters hold them up to get to the finish line. The first team that was able to transport for of the girls would win the competition and a day at a spa, and Team Wandy, which has won every team competition thus far, kept their streak going and won the contest.
That was followed by every fighter on Team Silva going to a spa and getting massages. After that point, the focus of the episode shifted to the fight.
Antonio Branjao talked about how he was picked on as a kid for being fat, while Wanderlei Silva supplemented his back story by adding that Branjao has ridiculous conditioning for a heavyweight.
Vitor Miranda talked about a tragic event that no parent should ever face. After moving to America to train MMA full time in 2011, Miranda lost his four-year-old son after the boy tragically drowned in the family’s pool.
Before the fight, Branjao and Miranda weighed in successfully for their heavyweight bout, and the two friends agreed to wear sunglasses and a cap during their stare-down to eliminate the animosity that is usually created with stare-downs.
The fight took place next. In the fight walk-outs, Antonio Branjao came out with “#Jesus” taped across his Team Silva jersey.
Branjao started off by controlling the fight, closing the distance and working Miranda against the cage with the clinch. Halfway through the first frame, Miranda was able to get some separation and began to get into a rhythm on the feet. With less than a minute remaining in the first period, Miranda put together a nice combination that was highlighted by a right that dropped Branjao. Miranda followed up with ground strikes until the fight was called.
After the fight, the two friends embraced, and they both were very emotional after the fight. Branjao was upset because he was out of the tournament, and Miranda was upset that he was directly responsible for his teammate having been eliminated from the bracket.
The News
1. According to a report by Tatame, a featherweight bout between Charles Oliveira (17-4, 1 NC) and Hatsu Hioki (27-7-2) has been set for the New Zealand UFC Fight Night on June 28. The fight pits two 145 pounders that ended losing skids in each of their last outings. It should be a fun fight that could be really entertaining from a grappling standpoint.
2. Eight years after their thrilling fight at Cage Rage 15, Melvin Manhoef (29-11-1, 1 NC) and Evangelista Santos (19-17) met once again in the main event of Gringo Super Fight 10, and Manhoef was victorious once again, running through Santos with strikes in under a minute.
Stuff I Enjoyed
1. There were several fantastic write-ups on Jon Jones’ absurd performance last night, and one of my favorites was this article by Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Snowden.
2. In the post UFC 172 edition of Trading Shots, Ben Fowlkes and Danny Downes did a fine job of taking a step back and analyzing the way Phil Davis handled Dana White’s criticism about him not wanting a title shot enough. You can check the MMA Junkie article out here.
3. Dave Doyle wrapped up UFC 172 eloquently with this aftermath piece on the pay-per-view.
4. Two enjoyable podcasts to check out would be the latest Sherdog Rewind, which featured Charles Farrell, who is the former boxing manager that wrote the Deadspin piece entitled “Why I Fix Fights”, and episode 50 of the Parting Shot Podcast that has a pair of interviews with Ben Saunders and MMA referee Brian Beauchamp.