A tournament favourite fell in the sixth episode of TUF 22.
Conor McGregor maintained control of the fight picks after Saul Rogers outgrappled Billy Quarantillo en route to a dominant decision victory the last time around and The Notorious elected to have Mehdi Baghdad take on Julian Erosa with Team Europe attempting to get their noses in front for the first time in the competition.
Baghdad had beaten McGregor’s training partner and close friend Artem Lobov to get a place in The Ultimate Fighter house and became one of the favourites to go the whole way, a fact acknowledged by UFC president Dana White ahead of fight time.
But the script was completely flipped by Erosa as he outstruck the French lightweight on the feet.
Juicy J came out looking composed in the stand-up, circling away from the powerful hands of Baghdad and mixing up nicely with strikes to the body and head.
Baghdad rallied in the second half of the opening round and it was clear that he was looking more for the knockout punch than registering any accumulative damage and the hard shots made it a tough round to call.
The second round continued in the same vein, with Baghdad plodding forward swinging for the chin of Erosa but such was his desire to generate power that the vast majority of Baghdad’s shots were telegraphed and thus easy to counter.
Lead elbows were the strike of choice from Baghdad which would make you wonder if he had injured his hand in the first but it seemed to be an out-and-out tactic from the Frenchman.
Nobody would have complained if the fight had gone to a deciding third round, with the back-and-forth exchanges arguably making it the bout of the season so far but it wasn’t to be as the judges registered a score after ten minutes.
The judges scored the bout 19-19, 20-18 and 20-18 and Erosa earned Urijah Faber’s Team U.S.A. their first victory since episode three which means that The California Kid regained control of the fight picks.
Faber decided to pit impressive striker Thanh Le against Martin Svensson for the sixth fight of the series with Team U.S.A. currently leading 3-2.
Catch The Ultimate Fighter at 3am BST every Thursday morning on BT Sport (part of the Setanta pack in Ireland). Repeated at 10pm BST on Thursdays.
