The 34th season of The Ultimate Fighter kicked off this week—you may have missed it amid all the UFC White House hoopla—with not one, but two episodes, and that means we had two fights already as well.
Before we get to results and an episode recap, let us introduce our special guest TUF 34 blogger: Bantamweight contestant Xavier Franklin! Throughout the season, Xavier will be providing behind-the-scenes insights on the most memorable scenes from the show—and what ended up on the cutting room floor.
Now, on to the show.
The TUF 34 season premiere opened with coaches Daniel Cormier and Michael Bisping putting 20 UFC hopefuls through the paces, with fighters from the bantamweight and strawweight divisions competing this year. And yes, that does say 20, which is two more than the 16 (eight fighters in each division) typically featured on TUF. As it turns out, following the tryouts, only 16 fighters would be selected, with two fighters from each division being sent home immediately.
A flip of the coin goes Bisping’s way and he chooses to pick the first fighters rather than the first fights. And the No. 1 overall pick is… Xavier Franklin.
Xavier: I knew whoever got the pick was going to choose me first. I knew if ‘DC’ got the pick, he was going to choose me. But Bisping did his research and he chose me, so I was like, ‘Let’s go!‘ I was so happy. I was keeping it in, like I was smiling and stuff, but I was so happy. It was like a relief thing, but I also knew at the same time.
At first, I was kind of worried because I was like, what if I don’t understand him, like his accent and stuff. I was like, f*ck, maybe I’m not going to understand him, but my coach is Bulgarian so I’m probably going to understand. Then he started talking and I’m like, ‘We’re good, we good.’ I just was like, I don’t know, maybe this is going to be weird, but at the same time it’s like, Bisping has one eye, my coach has one eye. I was like, this is destiny, it was bound to happen. It’s funny.
According to Xavier, the cast didn’t know there would be four cuts until they arrived at the Apex.
Xavier: They told us the first time ever in TUF history, the first time it’s ever happened. Going back before we got in the house, we were in the hotel waiting, I was counting the guys in the hotel as they’re walking by. ‘He’s a fighter, he’s a fighter…’ So I’m counting and I’m like, ‘This isn’t right. This isn’t 16. Why is there 10 of us [bantamweights]?’
So then a few weeks later we’re going and we do interviews and then as we’re walking to the van they’re telling us, ‘Yeah, two of you are going to get cut. Today.’ We’re like, ‘What?’ They’re like, ‘After the tryouts, they’re going to decide who gets cut.’ I was like, ‘Oh, shit. This isn’t guaranteed. Even you being here isn’t guaranteed.’ So when that happened, everybody then was pretty much a nervous wreck. Just like, damn, your dreams could be crushed just in this one little tryout. … So when those people got cut, I was just like, ‘Shit, this is crazy.’
Bisping also had the No. 1 strawweight pick and he went with another American, Fury FC strawweight champion Anna Melisano.
See how the team rosters ended up below.
Team Bisping
Bantamweights
- Xavier Franklin (6-1-1, 1 NC), U.S.
- Mehemmedeli Osmanli (11-1), Azerbaijan
- Ilimbek Akylbek Uulu (9-3), Kyrgyzstan
- Marlon Jones (5-0), U.K.
Strawweights
- Anna Melisano (6-1), U.S.
- GiGi Canuto (7-1), Brazil
- Mackenzie Stiller (6-1), U.S.
- Natalia Alves (8-0), Brazil
Team Cormier
Bantamweights
- Artem Belakh (11-2), Kazakhstan
- Micaias Urena (12-4), Dominican Republic
- Sean Mora (7-1), Cuba
- Christian Strong (9-1), U.S.
Strawweights
- Tina Black (15-4, 1 NC), Brazil
- Delphine Benouaich (7-2), France
- Melissa Amaya (8-0), U.S.
- Anita Karim (6-2), Pakistan
The fighters that ended up not making the cut were Rodrigo Vera and Abdul Hussein from the bantamweights, and Wushamo Hailai and Camila Reynoso from the strawweights.
It’s not all bad news for Vera and Hussein though, as Vera actually got the call to make his UFC debut on short notice this past May to fight Zhu Kangjie at UFC Macau, where he defeated Zhu by first-round knockout, and Hussein is already scheduled to fight Muin Gafurov at UFC Abu Dhabi on July 25.
Another memorable incident that occurred prior to teams being picked saw Sean Mora and Ilimbek Akylbek Uulu literally butt heads during tryouts, with Mora retaliating by punching Akylbek Uulu and opening a cut above his eye. Cooler heads prevailed and both fighters were eventually selected.
However, at first Xavier and the rest of the cast thought Mora was done for.
Xavier: On TV, I would say it was a little bit more dialed-down than I thought it was. There, it was way worse. It was way worse. Bisping was like, ‘What the f*ck? Why would you do that?’ We understand it’s competition, but you can’t be punching people. Sean literally sat out almost the rest of the tryouts. He wasn’t doing anything, but they made it seem like he was doing stuff. Ilimbek, too, was also trying out, but everybody had to be careful with him because of his eye.
They literally were, like, ‘[Mora] is out.’ They said, ‘He’s out. He’s done.’ They sat him off in a chair off to the side in the Apex, away from everybody. For us as the fighters that are competing, we were like, well f*ck that’s one person we don’t have to worry about because he’s good. Sean’s good as hell. Good wrestling, very tough Cuban guy, so we were just like, ‘That’s good.’ When they brought him back and DC chose him, I was like, ‘DC you snake, you two-faced bastard.’ [laughs]
A lot of people didn’t even see—because I talked to Ilimbek since he’s on my team—he was saying Sean headbutted him first, If you go back and watch it, Ilimbek’s clubbing pretty hard, like wrestling stuff, Sean headbutts Ilimbek, so then that’s when you see Ilimbek headbutt him and then Sean punched him. But they made it seem like Ilimbek did it first. No, Ilimbek, he’s a motherf*cker when it comes to wrestling. He’s really good, he’s strong, he’s a tank, so wrestling him is just not easy, he wrestles hard like that, but he’s the nicest person ever.
One other tidbit of drama that unfolded in the opening two episodes featured Tina Black taking umbrage with the cleaning habits—or lack thereof—of her housemates. We asked Xavier for his side of the story, since he seemed to take the brunt of Blacks’ wrath.
MMAF: Was the house as bad as it looked?
Xavier: NO! [On the broadcast] they said it was five in the morning, there’s no way in hell it was like that in five in the f*cking morning. If anything, our team was clean. I can only speak for our team, me, Ilimbek, Marlon, [Mehemmedeli], we all cleaned after ourselves after we washed every time. Our girls, sometimes, Anna did, Mackenzie did, but GiGi and Natalia, they didn’t like Tina, it was just some team beef, so they would not wash their shit on purpose sometimes and leave it out there for Tina to wash.
But Tina wasn’t checking her own team. Their boys, Sean, Micaias, Artem, they would eat their shit and just leave it in there. We’re not going to clean up after them, they’re adults. We would make something, clean our shit, and then put our dishes back, but their dirty dishes would be there, and we would get blamed for it. I’m usually not a morning person, but for some reason out there I was waking up super early. So every time I would wake up and come down, I don’t even know what’s going on, [Tina] would be like, ‘You’re always leaving a mess.’ And I would be like, ‘Holy shit.’ Why is it that I’m the only one every time I come down, she’s always in here and it’s just me and her, and she’s always grilling me. I’m like, ‘Bro, what is going on?’
Tina’s a nice person, I talked to her. I even tagged her, I made a little video yesterday at my gym cleaning up and I tagged her and she was laughing and shit, so it’s all good, friendly banter. It’s nothing bad.
As for this week’s fights, it’s been all Team Cormier so far with the former two-division champion’s fighters scoring wins to kick off their respective tournaments. Cormier’s No. 3 pick Melissa Amaya took out Bisping’s top pick Anna Melisano with a rear-naked choke submission in the first round, and Cormier’s last bantamweight pick Christian Strong proved the doubters wrong with a wrestling-heavy decision over Team Bisping’s Marlon Jones.
Unsurprisingly, Bisping wasn’t pleased with the results.
Xavier: Oh, they didn’t even show enough, f*cking Bisping was so mad. … After they both lost, Bisping was pissed. He’s like, we’re not going to keep losing. We’re going to get a win somewhere. We’re going to get a f*cking win somewhere. So he made us f*cking hard spar basically every day, drilling hard, running sprints, he was being crazy.
We’ll see if Bisping is any happier next episode as the highly touted Gigi Canuto takes on the last strawweight pick, Team Cormier’s Anita Karim.
The Ultimate Fighter 34 streams exclusively on Paramount+ with new episodes every Tuesday.
Unlike most editions of TUF, coaches Michael Bisping and Daniel Cormier will not fight at the conclusion of the season as both are long retired.
The finalists of the TUF 34 bantamweight and strawweight tournaments will compete for a six-figure UFC contract in the show’s live finale fights. A date for those bouts is yet to be announced.
Here are the quarterfinal results so far:
Melissa Amaya def. Anna Melisano via submission (rear-naked choke) (R1)
Christian Strong def. Marlon Jones via decision
Advancing to semifinals: Amaya, Strong
Eliminated: Melisano, Jones
Xavier Franklin is a cast member on The Ultimate Fighter 34 and a guest contributor to MMA Fighting. He also served as Michael Bisping’s unofficial English accent translator on the show.
