In this week’s TUF 23 blog, Team Claudia’s Lanchana Green offers an inside look at this week’s episode and recaps the final men’s light heavyweight elimination fight.
This week there were just two people remaining on our team still to fight, Abdel Medjedoub and Kate Jackson. If both of them won it would make Team Claudia the only team in Ultimate Fighter history to make a clean sweep.
Meanwhile, my teammate Cory Hendricks was in so much pain with his arm injury that he couldn’t stand up straight, lay down or sit down without being seriously uncomfortable. Thankfully though the UFC were looking after him well. He was seen to by the doctor, chiropractor and holistic therapist, which all helped but only marginally. Claudia Gadhela and the team also did everything they could to help – Rafael Vinicius would do massage and they would come by the house to check how he was doing.
But, without further ado, on to the fight! It was actually even better than I remembered.
Round 1: Round one was close, in my opinion. They both landed some hard shots, Abdel landing the cleaner, crisper of the strikes but Josh’s strikes sounded heavy! Abdel clinched up, despite advice to the contrary from Claudia and Rafael, and kept Josh pinned against the fence on numerous occasions. However, it seemed Josh did more damage in this position, landing good knees.
Round 2: The first half started off quite similar with both fighters exchanging strikes and Abdel looking for the clinch. But Josh broke off and dropped Abdel with a head kick, then is on him immediately landing heavy ground ‘n’ pound. Abdel took some damage and I actually didn’t want to watch the fight anymore – I thought it was going to get stopped – but then Abdel managed to scramble up and start pushing Josh back with his own strikes. That man can fight! I was so proud he got up, kept fighting and gave everything he could until the final buzzer. Many would have been given up when Josh got top position, but not our Abdel.
The fight was over and Josh won the decision, giving Joanna Jedrzejczyk her first victory of the season. As much as I like Abdel, I was really happy for Josh. He also gave everything he had, put on a great fight and, especially with three kids at home to feed, he deserved to come out on top.
Next week is my fellow Brit and teammate Kate taking on Ashley Yoder, and you guys get to find out who I’ll square off against in the semi-finals.
As always, I’d like to thank my sponsors: Revgear Europe, Functional Self, Steffan Abel Chriopractor, SL Sports Massage, Mindsport Consulting, Upgraded Grappler, LED Supply and Fit and My Protein.
UK fans can watch The Ultimate Fighter at 3am (BST) every Thursday morning on BT Sport (repeated at 10pm later that same day). The show is available on Fox Sports in the US (check your local listings).
