CARL REVIEWS: THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER 32, EPISODE 7

We're so close to finishing the first round.

EPISODE 7: SMASH HIS FACE

Until this episode, you were not allowed to smash faces. It is only now that you have permission to engage in face smashing.

PREVIOUSLY ON THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER: The house was briefly annoyed at Edwin Cooper Jr. but quickly buried the hatchet, the show continued to try to emphasize Robert Valentin's stardom, and Ryan Loder smashed Tom Theocaris in little over a minute, in the process tying up the score between the teams.

CURRENT STANDINGS: GRASSO 3, SHEVCHENKO 3

Breaking our usual pattern of starting with the fighters from the previous week, we enter the episode on Edwin Cooper Jr. sitting in the couch discussing the way he's going to put opponent Mairon Santos against the fence and easily knock him out. For purposes of time-filling, we actually replay the entire 'the house was worried about Cooper's drinking, Dana White talks about the show being a pressure cooker, Bekhzod Usmonov talks to him and he knocks it off' segment from last week. Thank you for helping me keep track of the plot of The Ultimate Fighter, I lost it somewhere in syndicated reruns.

We jump straight to the gym, where Valentina Shevchenko talks to Cooper about their strategy for the fight: High pressure, wrestling, zero space. Cooper's a D1 NCAA wrestler with high-level grappling and, according to Shevchenko, kicks like a mule, but they want him focused on the grappling where his biggest advantages are. Cooper agrees, but in confessional video he, like everyone, also thinks he is a multifaceted fighter who's great at everything and will dominate the fight wherever it goes.

Back at the house, Mairon is explaining his origin story: Training partner Karol Rosa (RIP, Women's Featherweight) fought Bethe Correia in 2021 and Mairon came with her as part of her corner, and as an undefeated 12-0 veteran he elected to stay in America, get his work visa and fight for the Legacy Fighting Alliance. This is when I realize that I've watched that fight! It was part of my tape research on Dan Argueta, who knocked him out and then proceeded to get signed to the UFC and go 1-2 (2). Woof.

Mairon's home movies roll first. Mother Santos is showing off their house in Rio, which is pretty much the peeling-paint, concrete-blocks stereotype you are thinking of. Mairon turned to jiu-jitsu and combat sports at 13 and never looked back, and his mother supported him and wants him to succeed. And once again that's it, and once again, this is what's really frustrating me about this show. There are legitimately good, personal stories to be told here, but it's so goddamn disinterested in telling them that this segment ends with Mairon saying "My mom raised me very well, she's a great woman," and he's visibly leading into the next word in his sentence when he's cut off by the show needing to move on to exciting topics like 'I live in a house in America now.' We could spend more time on his early years and how he came into the sport and what it means to leave and throw everything into chasing his dream, but we need to instead establish that he does Doordash and dogsits for spare cash.

Like, they establish that he married the girl he started dating in Rio when they were kids and they live together now, and that's it. That's it! The point of a human interest story is to generate interest in it!

At Mairon's training Alexa Grasso talks about learning Portuguese because training with a million Brazilians made it useful. (As someone who is trying to make the Spanish-to-Portuguese leap, I am rooting for her.) Alexa has a lot of faith in Mairon, who is, of course, good at everything and can easily win wherever the fight goes. We roll footage from his past fights as he evaluates his best strengths to be his calmness and his cardio, which allow him to outlast opponents while they blow themselves out. He wants to stay away, force Cooper to shoot until he gets tired, and, in our title drop, smash his face. Wonder if that's a spoiler.

At the house, Cooper has pictures of his grandfather and his girlfriend. I want to say anything at all else about them, but their entire presence in the segment is Edwin saying that they're there and they support him. He talks about his mother and father being great providers and his family being wonderful, but rather than seeing them, we go right back to Jackson-Wink for more training footage because god knows we haven't seen enough training footage. I would be less bothered by the training footage if we went more in-depth on how fight prep really goes, and it's not until I write that sentence that I realize a lack of depth is really what I'm missing in TUF. The characters, the stories, the training, the setting, none of it really gets any depth, it's just briefly introduced and then we move on. The entire room is slick with oil at all times.

Edwin's a wrestler. He wrestled as a kid, and now he wrestles more. He has one loss and he thinks it was stopped prematurely. I went and watched it real quick, and honestly, yeah, he's got a point; he was stuck in an armbar, the referee stopped the fight thinking he'd tapped out and it sure doesn't look like he did. Thanks, fight officials.

Weigh-ins! Nothing interesting happens. Cooper's teammates think he's gonna wrestle and win, Mairon's teammates, by which I mean it's just Robert Valentin again, think he's going to destroy Cooper.

We go straight to fight day, and I notice Cris Cyborg is in the Shevchenko locker room, which makes me mad I didn't note it when we saw her last week because it was only for a moment, I wasn't sure, and despite being a UFC champion and all-time great she works for the PFL now, so she will never be named on the broadcast.

you still see we fighting back
we gon' fight 'til nothing left
'cause what i want is what i get
i know what's mine, i'm taking it back

Once again both men talk about how they're really here to fight for their countries and the international aspect of this season is just so half-assed to the point that even the fighters sound like they recorded their vows of loyalty and representation at gunpoint.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Mairon Santos (13-1, Team Grasso) vs Edwin Cooper Jr. (6-1, Team Shevchenko)

Big size advantage for Cooper at 6'1" to Mairon's 5'9", but because of the wonders of human biology the reach is about even. Cooper's 31 to Mairon's 23, for the filthy ageists in the audience. There's also a full 23 minutes left in this episode, so we're going long tonight.

ROUND ONE

For his talk of calmness, Mairon comes out immediately looking for high kicks and right hooks. He does get Cooper to take a shot from way too far out, which he easily sprawls on and punishes with a hard leg kick, but Cooper gets ahold of a single in the resulting fracas and gets him on the ground anyway. It's less than a minute in and the wrestling has already succeeded. Cooper grapevines the leg to work towards back control, one of Mairon's corner very insanely tries to convince him Cooper is already gassing, and the back ride continues unabated with Cooper landing the occasional punch. Robert tries to guide Mairon out of the bad position, but Cooper is forcing him to carry all his weight and sweeping out a leg every time Mairon plants his feet. Mairon gets away with a fence grab but it's still not enough to get out up. Cooper's not landing anything big, but he's still scoring with punches and knees to the side while Mairon is accomplishing nothing, and with ninety seconds left in the round he is visibly frustrated. Mairon finally makes it back up to his feet and separates from the clinch with half a minute left in the round, but it's Cooper who's landing leg kicks. Just before the round ends Mairon goes for a double hail mary by charging in with a flying knee that is nowhere near Cooper, and upon recovering he hurls himself to the ground with a jumping spinning wheel kick that is slightly closer, but not nearly enough so to land.

Not a difficult round to score. Valentina is pleased with Cooper's performance but warns him not to let Mairon have any space because Mairon's about to start taking risks to win; Robert Valentin goes forehead-to-forehead with Mairon to impart ancient grappling knowledge to him while Diego Lopes pleads with him to take this round so there can be a third. Alexa Grasso, as always, is confined to the outside of the cage.

ROUND TWO

Cooper starts slamming leg kicks into Mairon immediately, but this time Mairon is successfully taking over the middle of the cage and forcing Edwin back to the fence. Mairon lands a solid left hook to the face and follows a retreating Cooper with a left to the body that visibly rattles him. Cooper's fully on the defensive and Mairon is enjoying having space to pick his shots, but he's also jumping back a foot and a half when Cooper feints the takedown. Cooper, however, can't get in, so his takedown attempts are now coming at Mairon's range and are being easily fended off and punished. With half the round over it's all one-way traffic save the rare jab from Cooper, and Mairon looks exceedingly comfortable with this pace while Cooper is devolving into throwing big haymakers and eating leg kicks. Cooper is eating the calf kick every time he circles to Mairon's right and the straight every time he circles to the left, and he does not seem to know how to adjust. Mairon's pumping jabs, but the real damage is coming from that calf kick, and when Cooper shoots for the third time in the last minute of the round he gets sprawled on and eats an uppercut for his trouble. Valentina is yelling for Cooper to go back to the wrestling, but there isn't enough time left in the round to do anything but get hit some more.

Also not a difficult round to score. Valentina reminds Cooper that he needs to wrestle or he's not going to get anywhere; Lopes compliments Mairon's pace and warns him that Cooper's about to go nuts looking for takedowns at the start of round three, so stay the hell away and let him burn himself out.

ROUND THREE

Cooper does not, in fact, shoot in the first twenty seconds. He continues to box and throw leg kicks, which means by thirty seconds in he's back against the fence. He is finding the timing on his jab, but after a few of them Mairon pushes through with a left hook that shakes Cooper up, and Valentina yells for Cooper to shoot a takedown while Mairon is coming forward. Instead, he tries to intercept him with a knee. Mairon unsurprisingly uppercuts him in the goddamn face. Cooper refuses to wrestle and instead starts coming forward aggressively behind 1-2s, and when Mairon tries to counter Cooper finally shoots the double and gets him down again, but it's still too far out so they wind up clinched against the fence and Mairon is able to circle out. He's back to landing the calf kick and Cooper is back to circling away and looking confused with three minutes left in the fight. Cooper smacks a right hand off Mairon's face, but another takedown gets sprawled on and rather than following up on it he returns to the boxing, which he's evening up a little with persistent jabs. With two minutes left Cooper tries a single, but there's nothing on it and Mairon backs out of it easily. Cooper does, however, finally continue applying forward pressure, and now he's forcing Mairon to repeatedly defend clinches and takedowns, which is allowing Cooper to land jabs and rights. With a minute left Cooper gets a single against the fence, but despite dragging Mairon halfway across the cage he can't complete the takedown. Mairon is visibly exhausted, however, and when Cooper finally shoots another double he puts forth a few seconds of defense before more or less collapsing facefirst, which gives Cooper ground control and thirty seconds to do something with it. He settles into the clinch while landing small punches and knees again, and Mairon gets back to his feet but cannot break out of the clinch, and the fight expires with Cooper holding onto his back.

That was looking pretty clear until Mairon gassed, but ultimately the third round was close enough that both corners are celebrating as though they're sure they won. The fight gets a full recap that includes deep thoughts from Grasso, Shevchenko and Dana White alike, which amount to 'hey, that was a good back and forth fight and either guy could win the decision.'

But only one man can. Mairon Santos wins by split decision, so the TUF judges can, in fact, disagree. Mairon cries happily and he appears to have burst blood vessels in his right eye, but it doesn't stop him from going back to the locker room for the customary group hugs. Edwin returns to a less happy locker room where Valentina castigates him for giving the second round away. He is disappointed, but calls it a learning experience.

We close as always on fight announcements, and there's only one fight left so there's no mystery about it: Team Grasso's Paddy McCorry will face Team Shevchenko's Mark Hulme, both of whom have had a combined total of eleven seconds of airtime as of yet. Let's finally end the first round.

NEXT TIME ON THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER: Valentina takes her team on a helicopter tour of Las Vegas, we have our last preliminary fight, and the semifinals are announced.