The Blackzilians continued their winning ways on the previous episode of The Ultimate Fighter with Vicente Luque defeating MMA veteran and American Top Team competitor, Nathan Coy.
The house morale remained as it’s been for the majority of the show, with ATT reeling and the Blackzilians sharing laughs and high-fives around. Outside of Hayder Hassan’s quick knockout victory, the Blackzilians have reigned supreme throughout the show. It appeared that the American Top Team has no answer to the Blackzilians team.
With all the losses piling up, ATT is just three losses away from being mathematically out of the running to win the show. Their backs against the wall, Dan Lambert and ATT roll with Hassan again to bring home a win. The ATT coaches are picking Hassan simply based on the fact they believe he’s their only fighter that can be assured to bring home victory.
Felipe Portela is the fighter of choice for the Blackzilians this week. Portela is originally from Brazil and moved to Florida from San Diego to join the team. Interestingly enough, Portela owns a victory over his teammate Luque, via heel hook. He’s also faced his opponent for this week’s episode of TUF one time previously, losing by knockout to Hassan under the Titan FC banner.
The prelude to this fight goes exactly as one would think. Hassan and ATT are confident in their ability to score another victory while Portela vows that he’s not the same fighter and will look to avenge his defeat.
As a reminder, here’s how the two teams stack up.
Round one began with Portela immediately shooting for a takedown. Hassan managed to get up but Portela was clinging to him for dear life. Hassan scored some points with crisp punches to which Portela looked to counter with takedowns. Portela did very little to no damage with his grappling exchanges. Portela then switched his strategy to attacking Hassan’s lead leg, an attack that seemed to work for the Blackzilians fighter. However, Hassan was able to corral Portela against the fence multiple times and tee’d off on his foe. Every strike thrown from Hassan had bad intentions written on it but Portela waved him in more after almost every flurry. The first round clearly went to Hassan for landing the better strikes and shrugging off most of Portela’s takedown attempts.
Round two looked to be much of the same with Portela attacking the leg and Hassan launching bombs at Portela’s head. Portela continued to taunt his opponent. Both fighters had their moments in the second round with strikes but Portela was able to score a late takedown.
However, two out of the three judges awarded Hassan both rounds to score another victory for ATT.