With Team Cormier’s lead moving to 4-1, Team Sonnen’s Matt Dixon takes on Mexico’s Alex Sanchez in the third welterweight bout with one more to follow. Despite the focus being on the two welterweights, Brazil’s Diego Bianchini and Rodrigo Sezinando kept up their war of words.
While his record may say otherwise, Sezinando brought up Bianchini’s only professional loss that set off The Brazilian Bad Boy. For Bianchini, he believes that his one in the loss column is unjustified and argues that he in fact won the fight. With both prospects looking to get their hands on each other, the tension in the house kept building as both contestants seemed to make it apparent about wanting to fight each other.
Back at the UFC Apex, Coach Cormier brought in two former TUF contestants and UFC champions, Raquel Pennington and Rose Namajunas. Pennington was featured on TUF 18 that was the first season to feature female fighters in the show’s history. Despite starting off strong with two victories, she was eventually defeated by Jessica Rakoczy via unanimous decision.
Regardless of the unwanted outcome for Pennington, the fighter nicknamed “Rocky” would show her grit and toughness when she won the vacant women’s bantamweight championship more than a decade later at UFC 297.
On the other side, Rose Namajunas was featured on TUF 20 that introduced the UFC’s strawweight division and crowned the inaugural champion. While Namajunas did have two impressive wins, she would lose in the finale to the inaugural UFC strawweight champion, Carla Esparza. Namajunas would eventually become the first two-time UFC strawweight champion with wins over Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Jessica Andrade and Zhang Weili.
Both former champions looked to encourage Team Cormier’s fighters through their own experiences of and growing good habits that can be drilled into their own fights, even during training. For Namajunas, she discusses of having “go-tos” that can be relied on when fighting.
“I like to say punch them in the face, take their back and choke them out.” Namajunas said.
For Pennington, she credits her experiences on TUF as being a pivotal moment in her career as she was one of the first women to be signed to the UFC. “Overall, it’s cool because you get to see how different athletes function,” Pennington said.
“You get to learn different things from coaches that you’ve never met and just learn from different people. So it’s a huge learning experience,” Pennington said.
Back at the house, Dixon recalls having Dana White on Dana White’s Contender Series in his fight against Orion Cosce. As the second round hit, Dixon describes “hitting a wall” as he began to fatigue that allowed for Cosce to win the fight. With redemption on the line for Dixon, Team Sonnen’s welterweight looks to show the UFC president he is worthy of going all the way.
Dixon describes his game plan going into the fight of looking to walk Sanchez down and mix up his movement to get the knockout win. “You’re gonna see kicks from me. You’re gonna see dynamic footwork, dynamic movements, Dixon said.
During team prep, Chael Sonnen brought in his long-time teammate and TUF 3 contestant, Ed Herman, to focus on old-school techniques such as ground-and-pound and dirty boxing that he used during his career. By combining old-school with new-school movements, it makes for a dangerous combination that shows two generations of fighting being used at once.
For Alex Sanchez, the fighter from Mexico discussed growing up near the Mexico-U.S. border that created his work-ethic. “I didn’t have time to train martial arts when I was a kid. Like every working class family, the first thing you learn is to work,” Sanchez said.
While working in the fields under contract by the United States, Sanchez recalls waking up at 3am to work in freezing conditions that allowed for him to make enough money to pay for training in Mexico.
During the weigh-ins for the TUF welterweights, Dixon and Sanchez both made weight for their semifinal contest that promises to be a striking extravaganza.
With fight day finally arriving, both welterweights contestants believe they have what it takes to bring home the victory and move forward in the competition. For Dixon, he doesn’t see the fight as personal but still looks to leave his mark in the octagon with a win over Mexico’s, Alex Sanchez.
On the other side, Sanchez looks to bring the fire in the fight and come out on top with the victory.
During round one, Dixon made his striking known early by landing several punches to the face of Sanchez, while also mixing in body kicks. Despite both successfully weighing in for the 170 pound contest, there was a noticeable size discrepancy between the two fighters as Dixon appeared bigger and stronger than his opponent.
With Team Sonnen’s fighter applying pressure, Dixon did what he said he was going to do by using his dynamic movements and diverse striking that left Sanchez struggling to stay in the fight. Despite a clean right overhand by Sanchez, the first half of round one was almost entirely controlled by Dixon with two and a half minutes left.
Dixon would eventually land a powerful left hook that dropped Sanchez and gave him the, bringing the frustration out of Daniel Cormier as he expressed aggravation for his fighter in not going forward as much as he wanted to.
“You can’t run from a fight. You got to be willing to go through the fire, man, in a fistfight,” Cormier said.
With Dixon showing his knockout power, the gap becomes smaller as Team Cormier now leads 4-2 with the last flyweight fight taking place between Roybert Echeverria and Tumelo Manyamala.
In a fight between South Africa and Venezuela, Team Cormier’s Manyamala looks to use his size and reach to his advantage to get the victory. Despite being the smaller fighter, Echeverria’s experience and wrestling are key factors that could make the difference for his team.