In this week's episode, we got to see the second semi-finals fight of the tournament as Dagestani native Timur Valiev fought the Canadian Brad Katona. The episode, like so many this season, seemed to miss a lot of what was happening at the house and the interactions between the fighters.
I’m not a reality television editing producer but it just seems to me like whoever has that job is missing a lot of the real human interactions that occurred on the show. I know that I don’t have any experience editing film, but it just seems like they missed the boat when it comes to getting the audience to invest in the fighters a little bit more by showing some of the stuff that happened in the house. Regardless, this week's fight proved to be quite the scrap between two very tough bantamweight fighters.Timur was cut from the UFC after posting a 2-1-1 record. Many people, myself included, wondered what he was even doing on the show or why he had been cut from the UFC. His one loss came via decision to Jack Shore, a prospect with a lot of hype behind him who has bounced in and out of the rankings in the last couple of years. For whatever reason, Timur found himself on the show and proved why he was many people's pick to win the entire thing. Brad Katona, who was released from the UFC after posting a 2-2 record, was also a unique case because he had already won the show once before on Season 27. His fighting style, however, is usually pretty boring so I could see why the UFC cut him. He posted a 4-0 record outside of the UFC and captured the Brave FC title along the way so he definitely earned his chance at another opportunity.
The fight itself was close. The first round was back and forth and was the hardest round to score for myself. Brad was able to secure a takedown at one point and Timur opened Brad up with a big gash over his head that made this battle a bloody affair. The second round, however, was a decisive round for Timur. He landed cleaner shots, controlled the fight for a couple minutes from top, and was clearly in the driver's seat heading into the third. The third round, although closer than the second, was still a round that I felt like Timur deserved to win. Brad landed a few good hooks in this round but he ate a lot of leg kicks and I still had Timur landing the bigger shots and controlling things in the standup. Each fighter got a takedown at different points in the round but neither had a ton of control time or did a lot of damage from top position. In the end, I thought it was pretty clear that Timur had won at least two out of the three rounds but, as is so often the case in mixed martial arts, two of the three judges scored the fight the other way and Brad walked away with a questionable split decision win.
Because of the nature of the show and how it is filmed, I wasn’t able to see any of the semi-final fights until they began airing last week so it has been fun to watch the fights with you all. This episode left me feeling bad for Timur. He is such a good guy and to come up short in the way that he did is a hard one to stomach. Layer on top of that the fact that Brad Katona, the least likable guy in the house, was the beneficiary of it all and I hope the picture is painted well enough for you to understand why it was a hard one to watch.
Next week, we get to see the two OG’s at lightweight Kurt Holobaugh and Jason Knight go to war. I’m excited to see the fight for the first time with you all. Kurt and Jason became very good friends throughout the filming of the show but something tells me that the friendship stopped at the cage door for this one. As always, thanks for following along. Until next time,
Cody “The Renegade” Gibson
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