The Final Fighter is gearing up for one more season of drama with rivals Alexa Grasso and Valentina Shevchenko on the helm.
Tuesday’s premiere not solely marked the thirty second season of the long-running actuality sequence, it is usually the twentieth anniversary of TUF, which started taping in 2004 (and later aired its first episode in January 2005). To commemorate the event and UFC’s international enlargement, TUF 32 options not solely a pair of star coaches born exterior of the US in Mexico’s Grasso and Kyrgyzstan’s Shevchenko, however a 16-fighter solid representing 14 totally different nations.
Episode 1 begins with the coaches evaluating a roster of middleweights and featherweights earlier than choosing their groups. Grasso wins a coin toss that enables her to make the primary choice (that means Shevchenko will decide the primary two fights) and she or he goes with countryman Guillermo Torres as her first featherweight decide.
For her first middleweight decide, Grasso selects Switzerland’s Robert Valentin. Shevchenko jokes that Grasso stole certainly one of her fighters as she has skilled with Valentin at Tiger Muay Thai. Shevchenko’s first picks are South Africa’s Roedie Roets and Russia’s Shamidkhan Magomedov.
See how the group rosters ended up beneath.
Group Grasso
Featherweights
Guillermo Torres (Mexico) (7-1)
Kaan Ofli (Australia) (10-2-1)
Bekhzod Usmonov (Tajikistan) (11-4)
Mairon Santos (Brazil) (13-1)
Middleweights
Robert Valentin (Switzerland) (10-3)
Paddy McCorry (Eire) (4-1)
Omran Chaaban (Finland) (6-1)
Tom Theocharis (Canada) (9-5)
Group Shevchenko
Featherweights
Roedie Roets (South Africa) (7-1)
Zygimantas Ramaska (Lithuania) (9-2)
Nathan Fletcher (England) (8-1)
Edwin Cooper Jr. (USA) (6-1)
Middleweights
Shamidkhan Magomedov (Russia) (7-1)
Mark Hulme (South Africa) (12-3)
Ryan Loder (USA) (6-1)
Giannis Bachar (Greece) (9-2)
Following the group choices, Shevchenko dubs her squad “Group Bullet” and arms out a bullet to every of her fighters, in addition to UFC CEO Dana White.
The primary matchup of the season falls in Shevchenko’s arms and she or he selects her No. 1 featherweight Roedie Roets to combat Grasso’s No. 1 decide Guillermo Torres. It guarantees to be a battle of wrestlers, with Roets favoring his grappling and Torres having wrestled on the 2012 London Olympics.
After two aggressive rounds that sees each fighters have their probability to work from high place, a tense third is set by the bigger Roets touchdown higher punches within the standup and on the bottom. Torres — 10 years Roets’ senior at 37 — seems to fuel out within the ultimate spherical, opening the door for Roets to drag forward on the scorecards.
With the win, Shevchenko takes a 1-0 benefit in her TUF 32 teaching matchup towards Grasso, the UFC’s reigning flyweight champion. Grasso has the sting in her two-fight sequence with Shevchenko, having submitted her at UFC 285 after which narrowly escaping with a cut up draw of their rematch at Noche UFC.
Shevchenko additionally picks the primary middleweight combat, which takes place subsequent week. Her No. 1 decide Shamidkhan Magomedov takes on Grasso’s No. 3 decide Omran Chaaban.
The Final Fighter 32 airs dwell each Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET on ESPN+.
Following the season finale, Alexa Grasso and Valentina Shevchenko are anticipated to face off in a flyweight championship trilogy bout at a date nonetheless to be decided.
The finalists of the TUF 32 middleweight and featherweight tournaments may also compete for a six-figure UFC contract on the present’s dwell finale. A date for that occasion can also be but to be introduced.
Listed below are the quarterfinal outcomes to this point:
Roedie Roets def. Guillermo Torres by way of determination
Advancing to semifinals: Roets
Eradicated: Torres
