Ground and Pound - Recap

Clips from the last show are shown. The fighters talk about Leben fight. Again they are split. Dana tells us that a fighter from Team Liddell will move to Team Couture to even things out. We see tension building with Sam Hoger and his teammates. Sam says they haven’t been teammates to him. However, Josh Rafferty is the one that gets sent to Team Couture. Josh’s attitude is anything but unprofessional. He tells the team from the start he didn’t doesn’t want to be there. He eventually accepts the decision. The team challenge is hosted by Willa Ford. Team Couture wins the challenge to the surprise of Dana White. Team Couture decides who should fight. Alex and Mike want to fight as does Stephan Bonnar. They talk about picking Sam, or Bobby. Stephan talks about fighting Bobby. On Team Liddell’s side, Forrest says the easy fights to pick would be against Mike or Alex, then Stephan. Team Couture makes the surprising choice of putting Stephan to fight Bobby. Dana doesn’t agree with the choice saying it might have been better to go after a weaker fight. Bobby boasts about being the best fighter in the house. Stephan says it was a gutsy move but sticks by it. He says he like the other members of his team doesn’t like Bobby for what he did to Chris Leben. The next segments show Stephan and Bobby training for the fight.

Fight day arrives. Round 1 resembles the same fight with Chris Leben and Josh Koscheck. Both fighters are cautious for the first minute and the rest of the round shows a grappling battle on the mat. Stephan takes two hard shots to the face before Bobby takes him down. Stephan is in the same vulnerable as Chris when Bobby catches him at guard. Stephan tries to make a rally with a minute left powering himself out of the mat to strike Bobby. The two exchange strikes with Stephan coming ahead as the horn sounds.

In Round 2, Stephan is more aggressive and goes after Bobby. First, he strikes Bobby and then pushes him against the cage. Second, Stephan now does what Bobby did and takes him to the mat. Stephan is on top of Bobby and has space to do damage. Bobby puts a fight though. He almost delivers a triangle choke to Stephan with three minutes left. Stephan powers out of it. The referee breaks the two off the mat with two minutes and twenty-five seconds left. The last minute sees an impressive array of punches and strikes by both fighters to finish the fight. The judges decide that Stephan won the fight much the surprise of Team Liddell who finally has their winning streak snapped.

Both Stephan and Bobby think they won. Dana says Stephan looked more aggressive which helped his chances of winning. Bobby disagrees with the decision. Dana says anytime a fight goes to the judges this can happen. Stephan is ecstatic.


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