After a 2-week hiatus, TUF 20returned last night with a much anticipated grudge rematch between #6 seed Felice Herrig and #11 Heather Clark. As luck would have it, the fight went down in very similar fashion to their first encounter, with Felice using her Muay Thai background to set up her consistently improving takedowns and generally outwork Clark all around. The UFC has made the full fight available via its Ultimate Fighter Youtube channel, so check it out above.
Also on last night’s episode, it was revealed that #9 seed Justine Kish had torn her ACL and would therefore be removed from the tournament. In her place, #3 Tecia Torres — who was upset by #14 Randa Markos back in episode 1 — was reinstated to face #8 Bec Rawlings in a later episode. The twist: Torres will now fight for Team Pettis, who are currently up five to nil over Team Melendez.
After the jump: Clark and Herrig continue their war of words on TUF Talk, which is apparently a thing that exists now.
After a 2-week hiatus, TUF 20returned last night with a much anticipated grudge rematch between #6 seed Felice Herrig and #11 Heather Clark. As luck would have it, the fight went down in very similar fashion to their first encounter, with Felice using her Muay Thai background to set up her consistently improving takedowns and generally outwork Clark all around. The UFC has made the full fight available via its Ultimate Fighter Youtube channel, so check it out above.
Also on last night’s episode, it was revealed that #9 seed Justine Kish had torn her ACL and would therefore be removed from the tournament. In her place, #3 Tecia Torres — who was upset by #14 Randa Markos back in episode 1 — was reinstated to face #8 Bec Rawlings in a later episode. The twist: Torres will now fight for Team Pettis, who are currently up five to nil over Team Melendez.
After the jump: Clark and Herrig continue their war of words on TUF Talk, which is apparently a thing that exists now.
Next week: Team Pettis’ #5 ranked Aisling Daly takes on #12 Angela Magana.
(Here’s what the TUF 20 bracket looks like after episode 1; click image for full size version. Team Pettis is in green, Team Melendez is in purple. Props: Reddit MMA)
Last night’s premiere episode of The Ultimate Fighter: A Champion Will Be Crowned ended with Invicta FC standout Tecia Torres losing in a major upset, when she dropped a three-round decision to the relatively unheralded Randa Markos. If you think that’s a “spoiler” because you haven’t watched the episode yet, well, now you know how the rest of us feel. Due to some epic screw-ups by the UFC production team, the Torres/Markos result was briefly revealed on the broadcast before the fight had even aired, and UFC.com posted an episode recap while the show was still going on. Those are spoilers, my friends.
But all that weirdness aside, TUF 20 episode 1 was a highly satisfying two hours — and not just because the CagePotato logo appeared on the broadcast several times (!) in footage from Rose Namajunas’s Invicta fights. In an interesting change of format, the 16 strawweight competitors were given seeding-numbers based on their rank in the division, and placed into a bracket; #1-ranked Carla Esparza will fight #16-ranked Angela Hill, #2-ranked Joanne Calderwood will fight #15-ranked Emily Kagan, and so on. Coaches Anthony Pettis and Gilbert Melendez still got to pick their teams based on which fighters they liked best after an evaluation session — and they’ll still decide the order of the fights — but they weren’t given the seed-numbers beforehand. It worked out like this…
Instead of giving you a scene-by-scene rundown of everything that happened on the show, we’d like to debut the TUF 20 Checklist, which will hopefully hit the major themes that you’ll be seeing each week. Here we go…
(Here’s what the TUF 20 bracket looks like after episode 1; click image for full size version. Team Pettis is in green, Team Melendez is in purple. Props: Reddit MMA)
Last night’s premiere episode of The Ultimate Fighter: A Champion Will Be Crowned ended with Invicta FC standout Tecia Torres losing in a major upset, when she dropped a three-round decision to the relatively unheralded Randa Markos. If you think that’s a “spoiler” because you haven’t watched the episode yet, well, now you know how the rest of us feel. Due to some epic screw-ups by the UFC production team, the Torres/Markos result was briefly revealed on the broadcast before the fight had even aired, and UFC.com posted an episode recap while the show was still going on. Those are spoilers, my friends.
But all that weirdness aside, TUF 20 episode 1 was a highly satisfying two hours — and not just because the CagePotato logo appeared on the broadcast several times (!) in footage from Rose Namajunas’s Invicta fights. In an interesting change of format, the 16 strawweight competitors were given seeding-numbers based on their rank in the division, and placed into a bracket; #1-ranked Carla Esparza will fight #16-ranked Angela Hill, #2-ranked Joanne Calderwood will fight #15-ranked Emily Kagan, and so on. Coaches Anthony Pettis and Gilbert Melendez still got to pick their teams based on which fighters they liked best after an evaluation session — and they’ll still decide the order of the fights — but they weren’t given the seed-numbers beforehand. It worked out like this…
Instead of giving you a scene-by-scene rundown of everything that happened on the show, we’d like to debut the TUF 20 Checklist, which will hopefully hit the major themes that you’ll be seeing each week. Here we go…
Did the “ladies bring it” in the episode’s fight?: Yeah, they absolutely did. Tecia Torres dominated the first round against Randa Markos, battering the Iraqi-Canadian with her trademark side-kick and some painful-looking oblique kicks. (Torres was also aided by Herb Dean’s less-than-stellar officiating.) When Markos tried to take the fight to the ground, Torres wouldn’t let her. But Markos came alive in the second frame, eventually dragging Torres to the mat and smashing her with ground-and-pound. It was clear that both women were fading during the sudden victory round, but once again, Markos managed to score a takedown late in the round, and held Torres on her back until the final horn, which was enough to earn her the nod from all three judges. It was a truly gutsy performance from Markos, who we figured didn’t have a chance in this one.
Most absurd Dana White exaggeration (tie):
– “It’s the most important season we’ve ever done.” I think he meant “with the obvious exception of season 1.”
– “One of these girls is literally gonna become one of the biggest stars in the world.” Oh man. Demetrious Johnson is ten pounds heavier and has a penis, and he still can’t get over with fans.
Best tease of a scene from a future episode: At some point in the season, Dana White will have to console a crying “Rowdy” Bec Rawlings in a back room at the TUF gym. That usually means “injury,” but we’ll see. Poor Rowdy Bec. Also, one of the women passes out during a weight cut at one point.
Scariest quote: “Those women are my food.” — Angela Magana. Holy shit. Take this thing back to Baltimore! Thug Rose gets an honorable mention for her speech about how she enjoys hurting people.
Those fighters (along with five more strawweights to be named later) will compete on the 20th season of The Ultimate Fighter, which begins filming in May 2014. The winner of the season will become the UFC’s inaugural strawweight champion. Coaches for the season haven’t been named yet.
As for Invicta FC, company president Shannon Knapp has put on a happy face and explained that Invicta’s strawweight division will carry on without its 11 best fighters, which seems kind of depressing. But her promotion has had a good working relationship with the UFC since the beginning, and that’s not going to change.
At this point, you probably have a lot of burning questions racing through your heads, so we’ve put together a helpful FAQ to answer some of the major ones…
Q: Does this mean that CagePotato’s sponsorship of Rose Namajunas is effectively over? A: Yeah, pretty much. But we wish Rose the best with the bigger, fancier sponsors that she’ll be snapping up next year. JUST TREAT HER RIGHT, BRO.
Q: I haven’t watched TUF since the Brock Lesnar season. (Chicken shit, chicken salad, good times.) Why can’t the UFC just start putting these women on upcoming fight cards? Like, they could re-book Gadelha vs. Esparza for the inaugural strawweight title on a UFC on FOX 1 show or something. You know what I mean?
(Well, it was fun while it lasted. / Photo via InvictaFC)
Those fighters (along with five more strawweights to be named later) will compete on the 20th season of The Ultimate Fighter, which begins filming in May 2014. The winner of the season will become the UFC’s inaugural strawweight champion. Coaches for the season haven’t been named yet.
As for Invicta FC, company president Shannon Knapp has put on a happy face and explained that Invicta’s strawweight division will carry on without its 11 best fighters, which seems kind of depressing. But her promotion has had a good working relationship with the UFC since the beginning, and that’s not going to change.
At this point, you probably have a lot of burning questions racing through your heads, so we’ve put together a helpful FAQ to answer some of the major ones…
Q: Does this mean that CagePotato’s sponsorship of Rose Namajunas is effectively over? A: Yeah, pretty much. But we wish Rose the best with the bigger, fancier sponsors that she’ll be snapping up next year. JUST TREAT HER RIGHT, BRO.
Q: I haven’t watched TUF since the Brock Lesnar season. (Chicken shit, chicken salad, good times.) Why can’t the UFC just start putting these women on upcoming fight cards? Like, they could re-book Gadelha vs. Esparza for the inaugural strawweight title on a FOX Sports 1 show or something. You know what I mean? A: I do know what you mean, and the answer is that the UFC still holds the antiquated belief that The Ultimate Fighter builds stars and people enjoy watching it. That hasn’t been true for a long time, and the worst part is that some great strawweight fighters will probably never officially make it into the Octagon because they lose their first fight on TUF. That could happen to any of these 11 women, considering how talented they are as a group.
Still, let’s put the criticism in perspective — if Invicta threw together a 12-week Strawweight Grand Prix featuring Rose Namajunas, Felice Herrig, Bec Hyatt, Claudia Gadelha, Joanne Calderwood, Paige Van Zant, Tecia Torres, and Carla Esparza, we’d all think it was the most badass thing ever. Well, at least ReX and I would. (And Eric Holden, obviously.) At the very least, we expect some fun televised hijinx from the more colorful members of the cast.
Q: Will CagePotato be doing episode recaps for this season? A: Most likely, we will follow the TUF 18 format of doing full recaps for the first half of the season, then getting bored and just throwing up video highlights for the rest of the season when it becomes clear that none of our readers care anymore.
Q: Does time-travel exist? And if so, can I use it to skip past TUF 19 entirely? A: Funny story. When I was abducted by those aliens last year, they showed me an advanced kind of DVR, which they used to skip ahead to future seasons of any television show beamed in from Earth. (They called it a “skipper,” which in their cute alien accents sounded like “skeepuh.”) So yes, the technology exists. Is it worth getting your orifices probed, just to see how Mad Men ends? Absolutely.
I feel like I’m not doing a very good job of selling this show. People who actually watched it told me it was pretty damn entertaining, with flyweight champ Barb Honchak and strawweight Tecia Torres standing out with their impressive performances. The entire broadcast has been uploaded by the fine folks at Invicta, featuring the rather eclectic broadcast team of Michael Schiavello, Miesha Tate, and Muhammad “King Mo” Lawal. (Julie Kedzie was busy.)
Check it out, and let us know what you think/thought. I swear, I’ll get around to watching these fights tonight, or by tomorrow at the absolute latest.
I feel like I’m not doing a very good job of selling this show. People who actually watched it told me it was pretty damn entertaining, with flyweight champ Barb Honchak and strawweight Tecia Torres standing out with their impressive performances. The entire broadcast has been uploaded by the fine folks at Invicta, featuring the rather eclectic broadcast team of Michael Schiavello, Miesha Tate, and Muhammad “King Mo” Lawal. (Julie Kedzie was busy.)
Check it out, and let us know what you think/thought. I swear, I’ll get around to watching these fights tonight, or by tomorrow at the absolute latest.
It now has been about one and a half months since my first professional loss, and I have to say I feel great! Well just at the moment. Let’s not talk about my unattractive cry-athon that took place for God knows how long. It’s okay though, I’m glad everything happened the way it did. Pat’s mom told me something great. She said, “It’s better to fall off a ladder closer to the ground than all the way at the top.” She’s right because some people fall when they are so high they never come back from it.
Either way it still sucks to fall, especially when so many people out there are watching your every move, waiting for the chance to kick you when you’re down. Even though they are watching you so hard that they don’t even realize how pathetic their own lives are. How sad is that? They won’t ever know what this sucky feeling feels like because they don’t have the guts to climb up the ladder. They also won’t ever see how beautiful the view is. It reminds me of another great quote that went something like, “The more you avoid death the more you avoid living.” People are so afraid of getting hurt that they fear life itself. I have fear but I won’t let that stop me from taking chances and chasing my dreams.
I have learned a lot in my amateur and first two pro fights but not nearly as much as I have learned in the past month and a half. Now I know I have things to work on, and more importantly it doesn’t seem as easy as it did a few months ago! Before my pro debut in Invicta I went into that fight knowing I would be the greatest in the world one day but I didn’t have any proof that I was on that level yet. Going from that to setting a world record for the fastest submission with a flying armbar made me forget that I am competing at a really high level with a huge experience disadvantage.
It now has been about one and a half months since my first professional loss, and I have to say I feel great! Well just at the moment. Let’s not talk about my unattractive cry-athon that took place for God knows how long. It’s okay though, I’m glad everything happened the way it did. Pat’s mom told me something great. She said, “It’s better to fall off a ladder closer to the ground than all the way at the top.” She’s right because some people fall when they are so high they never come back from it.
Either way it still sucks to fall, especially when so many people out there are watching your every move, waiting for the chance to kick you when you’re down. Even though they are watching you so hard that they don’t even realize how pathetic their own lives are. How sad is that? They won’t ever know what this sucky feeling feels like because they don’t have the guts to climb up the ladder. They also won’t ever see how beautiful the view is. It reminds me of another great quote that went something like, “The more you avoid death the more you avoid living.” People are so afraid of getting hurt that they fear life itself. I have fear but I won’t let that stop me from taking chances and chasing my dreams.
I have learned a lot in my amateur and first two pro fights but not nearly as much as I have learned in the past month and a half. Now I know I have things to work on, and more importantly it doesn’t seem as easy as it did a few months ago! Before my pro debut in Invicta I went into that fight knowing I would be the greatest in the world one day but I didn’t have any proof that I was on that level yet. Going from that to setting a world record for the fastest submission with a flying armbar made me forget that I am competing at a really high level with a huge experience disadvantage.
It reminds me…one day I was lifting at Horsepower and I was breaking my own personal records left and right to the point that I didn’t even care! It wasn’t that the weight was too easy to lift. I was squatting 315 lbs and jumping 51” and I was working my ass off! I trained really hard for this last fight because that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? I knew that I was better than my opponent. I didn’t have anything to prove to myself. I felt like I was winning the fight but had the judges given it to me it wouldn’t have been a surprise to me because I felt like I deserved it. That is no way to go into a fight because it gives you no purpose. When you don’t have anything to prove to yourself then the reason for doing it becomes for other people or for money.
I now know I have to take what’s mine — no more going the distance, no more letting other people decide my fate. If you finish the fight you can sleep at night knowing that you have truly defeated the other person. Winning a decision is associated with scoring more points but points don’t matter when all it takes is one punch. You just have to make sure you finish. I always knew that but now I KNOW IT. I never realized how much more I can learn and grow. It’s an exciting feeling! I need to pay more attention to my thoughts and take more time. In the fight with Kathina I was under so much stress and I had all the excuses in the world to not do my job but I managed to turn it on and it gave me confidence that no matter what the circumstances were I’d pull through. Not that I could but that I would, and that was my mistake. I thought that no matter what the circumstances were I’d handle it. However, this time the stress got me! That is why we decided to not take another fight right away and take a little vacation. Sometimes we forget that healing our minds is just as important as healing our bodies. Stay tuned for my mind-healing experiences in Lithuania. Here’s a sneak peek:
Until then smiles and happiness everyone! Go outside, live a little, and climb up that ladder!
“It’s agitating, it gets under my skin. I know that there’s stuff that I could have done, but in the end I wouldn’t take it back for nothin’ because I felt like I was fighting for my life…but that’s the price that you pay if you don’t finish it, and I didn’t finish it. And after this fight I realized like, you only got you and that’s it, and…if you go to decision, it’s gonna be luck. You’re rolling the dice with the judges, and I’m not gonna let that happen again.”
So says a crestfallen Rose Namajunas, following her tough decision loss to Tecia Torres at Invicta FC 6. Though her stellar performance wasn’t enough to convince the judges to give her the win, Namajunas vs. Torres was easily one of the greatest WMMA fights of 2013. Hell, we were just proud to be part of her sports bra.
The latest “All Angles” video from Invicta manages to recap a night’s worth of emotional content into four minutes of behind-the-scenes gold, including the tense moments before the fight, highlights from the battle itself, Rose’s bummed-out post-fight monologue, and finally some incredible footage of Torres breaking down in tears while talking to her mom on the phone afterwards.
“It’s agitating, it gets under my skin. I know that there’s stuff that I could have done, but in the end I wouldn’t take it back for nothin’ because I felt like I was fighting for my life…but that’s the price that you pay if you don’t finish it, and I didn’t finish it. And after this fight I realized like, you only got you and that’s it, and…if you go to decision, it’s gonna be luck. You’re rolling the dice with the judges, and I’m not gonna let that happen again.”
So says a crestfallen Rose Namajunas, following her tough decision loss to Tecia Torres at Invicta FC 6. Though her stellar performance wasn’t enough to convince the judges to give her the win, Namajunas vs. Torres was easily one of the greatest WMMA fights of 2013. Hell, we were just proud to be part of her sports bra.
The latest “All Angles” video from Invicta manages to recap a night’s worth of emotional content into four minutes of behind-the-scenes gold, including the tense moments before the fight, highlights from the battle itself, Rose’s bummed-out post-fight monologue, and finally some incredible footage of Torres breaking down in tears while talking to her mom on the phone afterwards.
