Contributor: Nolan Howell
With the teams settled last week between coach and UFC Bantamweight Champion Cody Garbrandt and coach TJ Dillashaw last week, we look forward to a fight between TUF 19 winner Eddie Gordon from Team Garbrandt and TUF 22’s Tom Gallicchio.
We start this week at the fight announcement and UFC President Dana White talks about the trash talking and history between the two coaches, citing the split as TJ Dillashaw followed Duane “Bang” Ludwig out of Team Alpha Male as the reason for the rift. Garbrandt follows Dillashaw into his team’s warm-up room with Urijah Faber over his shoulder as they have words. Faber and Dillashaw get into it verbally as they yell about the split, while Garbrandt curses in the background and is first to buck again as he has to be held back. The confrontation essentially runs as an extended bleep button.
Eddie Gordon gets the first fighter feature as he recaps winning his TUF season and losing three straight fights. TJ Dillashaw takes the team out for Dhiego Lima’s 
birthday. Dillashaw says he wants to make it feel like Lima’s at home hanging out with his friends, which cuts to them at a Mexican restaurant in a hilariously tone-deaf splicing. Tom Gallicchio’s feature goes a bit more in depth since he lost early in his season. He had two surgeries on his foot and shoulder after TUF and he has an interesting business, operating quarter candy machines in businesses. Gallicchio says he’s tired of being broke. Gordon gets a more in-depth look as a father of four and working from home. Gordon takes his newborn to the gym with him as he doesn’t have a babysitter.
Fight prep sees Gordon focus on defending Gallicchio’s jiu jitsu, while Gallicchio tries to maximize his grappling. Weigh-ins go smooth and Dillashaw comes to the house on fight day and works Gallicchio out on the lawn. Gordon cuts himself a Mike Tyson-like over-shirt out of a towel and we get to the fight.
The fight sees Gordon win exchanges on the feet early with a jab and overhand right combo. At the midway point of the first round, Gallicchio gets a single-leg takedown and that’s all she wrote for Gordon. Gallicchio scrambles wherever he wants until he gets the back. Gallicchio backpacks Gordon until he gets the rear naked choke and Gordon is forced to fall to the mat and tap.
More arguing about the split between Dillashaw and Alpha Male leads to the fight pick from Dillashaw. His fighter Jesse Taylor will take on Garbrandt’s Mehdi Baghdad and Dana White hypes up the matchup for next week.
Overall, nothing unexpected from this episode and it becomes clear that the UFC struggles to fill the show with content when you get an early fight finish. It becomes a broken record unless someone with a truly interesting backstory is up, and those seem to be few and far between this season.
Also of note from the production side is that Mike Goldberg’s voice is still used in the opening video package to introduce Garbrandt and Dillashaw. While it is understandable that they just cut these out from fights, it isn’t a good look to continue to use Goldie’s voice after he was let go without as much as a goodbye.
You might be better served following the Wikipedia bracket on this season because it seems all the stories that are here have been told once too many times.
-Nolan can be reached @undercardnolan or at [email protected]
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