In the fifth installment of The Ultimate Fighter Season 31 we got to see the third bantamweight quarter final fight take place between Team Chandler’s Brad Katona and Team McGregor’s Carlos Vera. The episode starts with a scene where McGregor and his coaches visited the fighter house and put the prospects through a rowing workout in the downstairs basement.
This was a pretty regular occurrence from the McGregor team. The prospects seemed to like the workouts at first but as the season unfolded, some of them started to voice frustration that they weren’t doing more martial arts training and were instead doing a lot of conditioning sessions from the house.The next scene of the episode gets into the dynamics of having Brad Katona as a member of Team Chandler. Brad, a native of Canada, moved to Ireland six or seven years ago and has been training with Coach Kavanagh at SBG ever since. The fact that he is on Team Chandler during the show but trains with the McGregor coaches at home made for an interesting dynamic. Layer on top of that Brad’s diva like tendencies and the writing was on the wall that the relationship between Brad and the rest of Team Chandler was always going to be complicated. I’ll save more details for later in the season because there is more to unfold, but Brad was never viewed as a part of team Chandler from the fighters' perspectives. He didn’t want to do the work we were doing. He didn’t want to talk to us or make connections past basic pleasantries. He isolated himself and the team really did give him opportunities to be a part of what we were about for that time on the show but Brad preferred to be the odd man out it seemed like to me and his wish was granted for a majority of us in that house.
The episode also highlights Carlos Vera, the Ecuadorian fighter who trained at the 50/50 Gym with Ryan Hall in Virginia. Carlos was a prospect with 15 pro fights but he was the same age as most of the veterans. He had an interesting style that combined his background in traditional striking martial arts and the skills he had developed on the ground with Ryan Hall. Carlos was also a very cerebral guy. He had a background in accounting. You could tell he was a smart guy. Good at communicating. Full of stories. Liked to sit around and shoot the shit. One of the other things I really noticed about Carlos was his martial arts mentality. You could see the influence traditional martial arts had on his life. He was a martial artist. A fighter searching for a victory, sure, but a martial artist for life. It was a core part of who he was.
The episode also dives into some of the more specific dynamics surrounding the Brad Katona situation. Chandler was always such a positive guy during this entire experience. You could see how Brad and some of his individualized needs were rough for Chandler to deal with. I don’t know if I am built for dealing with a pre madonna type guy like that. I think I’d just show him the door. But Chandler navigated those waters pretty well. I also found it interesting that McGregor didn’t seem to really care very much about Brad Katona. Coach Kavanagh recused himself from coaching or cornering Carlos, and I think that was fair enough. But McGregor wanted Carlos to win. He coached him. I found that interesting.
The fight itself was fairly uneventful, as many of Brad Katona’s fights are. Carlos was landing some snappy kicks from the outside. Each guy landed a few good shots when they engaged in striking, but, by and large, Brad Katona used his footwork and forward pressure to back Carlos up against the cage, shoot on his legs, hold him against the cage, and/or take him down and hold top position for as long as he could. If you go back and watch Brad Katona’s fights, it’s pretty much his MO. It isn’t fun to watch. But it works for him. Brad presented a stylistic problem for Carlos. Carlos likes to dance from the outside. Skirt the cage. Explode in with big flurries of kicks and spins and get back out. The problem is, if you can’t keep your back off the cage and you don’t have the skills or capability to move and shift and adjust and reverse position along the cage when someones presses then it makes for a difficult way to fight a guy like Brad Katona, who literally just wants to hold you against the cage.
Next week, we get to see SBG’s golden boy Lee Hammond try to put the prospects on the board as he squares off with veteran Kurt Holobaugh in a quarter final lightweight fight. Thanks for reading and continuing to follow along. Until next time,
Cody “The Renegade” Gibson
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