The featherweights were back in action on the third episode of The Ultimate Fighter 32 and Team Grasso ended up taking a lead on Team Shevchenko.
Australia’s Kaan Ofli got the better of England’s Nathan Fletcher to advance in the 145-pound tournament.
Valentina Shevchenko had praised Fletcher’s well-roundedness, describing him as “a complete fighter,” but Ofli said prior to the bout he felt confident in his abilities anywhere the fight took place.
Fletcher is a veteran of the Cage Warriors organization and trains out of Next Generation MMA Liverpool, which is the same gym as UFC stars Paddy Pimblett and Molly McCann.
The first minute of the fight was spent with the two exchanging strikes before Ofli landed a hard right hand and followed it up with a takedown.
From there, the Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt methodically attempted to pass the guard, eventually getting to mount, taking the back and flattening out Fletcher. He landed ground-and-pound strikes and came close to locking in an arm-triangle choke but Fletcher defended well, escaped and worked back to his feet where the two ended the round.
The second round began similarly to the first except Ofli landed his right hand-takedown combination quicker this time. Fletcher was also quicker to reverse positions. Ofli proved the slightly stronger fighter in clinch positions along the fence but Fletcher showed off his scrambling ability more than once.
Despite the second round being more evenly matched, at least two of the three cage-side judges scored both rounds for Ofli so Alexa Grasso’s fighter won a two-round decision.
The way the TUF 32 tournament works is the bouts, which go onto the fighters’ official records as exhibition fights, are scheduled as two-round bouts and only see a third if the first two rounds are split.
Ofli said he escaped from his first bout injury-free.
NEXT UP
The episode concluded with a fight announcement that left little mystery. Next week’s featured bout will be the middleweight matchup between Russia’s Shamidkhan Magomedov of Team Shevchenko and Finland’s Omran Chaaban of Team Grasso that was initially supposed to happen on the second episode but was postponed when it was revealed Chaaban was dealing with a cold sore at the time and did not receive medical clearance on the day of the fight.
On the previous episodes: Roedie Roets of Team Shevchenko defeated Guillermo Torres of Team Grasso via decision in the first featherweight fight of the season and the middleweight tournament opened with Team Grasso’s Robert Valentin’s 18-second knockout of Team Shevchenko’s Giannis Bachar.