Ultimate Fighter Brazil S 1

[nerfbat]

The basic low-down:

 

- 16 fighters enter the house, 8 at Featherweight, 8 at Middleweight. Wanderlei Silva and Vitor Belfort are the coaches, their assistants ate currently TBA. The show has just about wrapped filming & is being produced in the same way the prior version of TUF on Spike TV was made (i.e. - pre-filmed & packaged, nothing broadcast live).

 

- Due to appalling ratings for the two first episodes of the current TUF 15 season on FX, no major Fox affiliates or Fox themselves have been willing to pick up the international broadcast rights to TUF Brazil. Which is an epic shame, because the fights on this show will be awesome compared to the tripe being served up on TUF 15 at the moment, as will the Wand x Belfort coaching rivalry. As a result, the UFC in the mean time will stream the show delayed online at www.TUF.tv & around September this year, FuelTV will re-air the show in the US with english subtitles. Unfortunately the web-stream is only for US residents.

 

- Conversely, TUF Brazil #1 is being broadcast in Brazil on the nation’s #1 TV network, in prime-time on Sunday nights at 8.30pm (unlike the dog’s breakfast of a timeslot that TUF 15 has in the US at the moment, late on a Friday night). The show begins in Brazil this coming weekend & the match-up’s for the qualifying fights to enter the house are set out below:

 

Middleweights

Delson Heleno vs Gilberto Galvao

Leonardo Teixeira vs Samuel Trindade

Daniel Sarafian vs Richardson Moreira

Sergio Moraes vs Thiago Real

Francisoc Drinaldo vs Charle Maicon

Cezar Ferreira vs Gustavo Sampaio

Joao Paulo de Souza vs Thiago de Oliveira

Renee Forte vs Fabio de Costa

 

Featherweights

Alexandre Ramos vs Hugo Viana

Rodrigo Damm vs Fabricio da Silva

Wagner Campos vs Fernando Duarte

Giovanni Santos Jr. vs John Teixeira

Marcos Vinicius vs Pedro Mobre

Rony Bezerra vs Dileno Lopes

Anistavio Medeiros vs Rafael Bueno

Johnny Goncalves vs Godofredo Pepey

 

 

[nerfbat]

Episode 1 thoughts:

 

The first episode was absolutely cracking. It was presented in the same format as the TUFs15 opener (16 qualifying fights, no commentators or spectators), except they were 3-round fights. It dawned on me VERY quickly that the format of having no commentators was not what made the TUF 15 qualifying fights seem boring - it was that the fighters themselves were just not very good or skilled, even though they only had to fight 5mins. Some of the qualifying fights were absolutely god damned ʞ©$ɟing epic. I mean like in the sense of both Frye/Hotness slugfests and Fedor/Herring beatdowns. There were some epic come from behind last second victories too. You could have taken 12 of these 16 fights and whacked them on a PPV & I would of gladly paid $40 for them.

 

With the opening handful of fights, they started off the night with two or three consecutive guys who got floored hard with punches & G’n'P’d badly, before escaping and than landing one-punch or one-kick KO’s themselves. It set the tone for the whole night of fights & these guys were so well rounded it was awesome to see. It didn’t matter where these contests went, they all had sweeps/escapes/reversals out of any bad situation & you never really knew what to expect next. I think other than one or two bouts, there were nothing but utterly compelling match-up’s, between guys FAR superior in talent and ability than almost any TUF competitor I’ve seen in years. Almost every last one of these guys fighting in the qualifiers could easily be in the UFC ranks already.

 

I think the only real note of concern for the show I have is that almost half the cast are gonna enter the house with minor-to-significant injuries already. These qualifier fights were absolute ʞ©$ɟing wars for the most part & many of them at the presentation with Dana White/Vitor/Wand at the end of the night had BADLY swollen hands/wrists/feet & some with substantial cuts and broken noses. There was even a guy who lost a couple of teeth. I know the fighters wont care & will fight on anyway, but the medical clearances to fight on the show are being held to NSAC medical clearance standards, so will be interesting to see if a handful of these guys get replaced or not.

 

 

[nerfbat]

Ratings are in for the first episode that went to air Sunday night on Brazilian TV.

 

The show rated a whopping 8 Million viewers, which ranked the show the 3rd highest rating TV program in the entire country, across all network & cable stations, for the entire 7 day ratings week.

 

Awesome...!

 

 

 

 

better than the tripe called TuF 15 we are stuck with on the live U.S show

 

 

 

[nerfbat]

http://www.ufc.tv/ufc/video/the-ultimate-fighter-brasil-episode-1/1391?watch=true

 

first ep here..!