Last night’s episode of TUF: Live featured a fight between Andy Ogle and Mike Rio, but first there was a recap of what had been happening in the TUF house over the past week.
This episode featured the traditional ‘Coaches Challenge’, and on this might have been the most interesting one to date, asking Urijah Faber and Dominick Cruz to compete in a test of marksmanship with guns mixed in with an obstacle course.
The stakes are high too with $20,000 up for grabs for the winner plus $1500 for the rest of the coaches team.
It turns out to be a close contest with Cruz gaining the lead early, but Faber catching up and then overtaking him at the end to claim the win.
Later in the week the two coaches talk through their potential picks for the quater-finals with Dana White, but we’ll have to wait until the end of the show to find out who’s fighting who.
On to the fight then, and in the first round Ogle utilized good movement and a stiff jab to largely keep Rio at bay and outstrike him.
That left Rio needing to raise his game in the second round and he certainly did that, pressing the action more on the feet, bloodying his opponents nose in the process, and then securing a takedown.
Things were really looking up for Rio as he managed to get Ogle’s back, but the UK fighter manages to turn and ends up in top position.
Ogle advances position and then is able to take the rapidly tiring Rio’s back. He softens him up with strikes and then sinks in a fight-ending choke in the fourth minute of the final round.
That takes Team Faber to 5-3 for the season so far and caps off a good week for him after winning the coaches challenge too.
For a change Dana isn’t in the studio, but he still comes on the show live via satellite to announce the first two quarter-final pairings: James Vick Vs Joe Proctor and Justin Lawrence Vs Michael Chiesa.
