Rundown of post-fight news and notes from the TUF 14 Finale…
— 1,649 fans attended the TUF 14 Finale at the Pearl at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. The live gate number was not released.
— TUF 14 featherweight champ Diego Brandao made out big at the finale. Not only did he earn the $40,000 Submission of the Night bonus, he and Dennis Bermudez were awarded the $40,000 Fight of the Night bonus as well. TUF 14 bantamweight winner John Dodson picked up the $40,000 Knockout of the Night bonus.
— Fan-voted $25,000 bonuses for the season were also announced. Louis Gaudinot and Dustin Pague won best fight. Once again, John Dodson earned best knockout. And Dennis Bermudez won best submission.
— Dana White was not a fan of Jason “Mayhem” Miller’s performance in the Octagon tonight. After tweeting out that it was the “most one-sided fight” he’s ever seen, Dana told Heavy.com’s Megan Olivi that he doesn’t know if Mayhem will be back. Transcription via MMA Mania:
“It’s one of the most lopsided fights I’ve ever seen. I’m disagreeing with people. I didn’t give ‘Mayhem’ Miller the first round. He had a quarter of a mount and didn’t do a thing and actually, Bisping was landing punches. I think Bisping landed more shots, did more damage. I go for damage and I think Bisping did more damage in the first round than Mayhem did. I don’t know (if we’ll see Mayhem back in the UFC). We’ll see. He didn’t have a good performance against Georges St. Pierre and he definitely didn’t have a good performance against Michael Bisping.”
Chances are he will, but Mayhem definitely didn’t make a good impression on his boss.
Mayhem’s biggest issue seemed to be his cardio. He gassed pretty hard in round two and Bisping pretty much took over from that point on. Most people would point to poor preparation to explain Mayhem’s lack of cardio, but Michael Bisping believes he just beat it out of him.
“This was a big opportunity for Jason. I guarantee he had the cardio to go five [rounds],” Bisping said. “Guess what? You might have cardio, but when someone’s landing big body shots like I was, kneeing you in the stomach and punching you repeatedly in the face, your cardio gets affected. The best runners in the world, you kick the [expletive] out of them, they won’t run quite as well.”
Bisping told the crowd that he wasn’t happy with his performance, but he felt satisfied to “teach Mayhem a lesson.”
“This was a satisfying victory,” Bisping said afterward. “Jason jumped on the bandwagon of that a) nobody likes me, and b) I’m not a very good fighter, and I don’t deserve…all the rewards I’ve received for being a professional fighter all this time. He was quick to discredit me, that I was given hand-picked opponents and things like that. That doesn’t sit well with me, and I find it very offensive. It was nice to go out there and teach him a lesson.”
“For someone who has no punching power, I do believe the statistic is that seven out of eight of my last opponents have all gone to the hospital. While I’m sitting here doing this, he’s probably in the back of an ambulance.”
Bisping added that he wants a title shot, but while Chael Sonnen and Mark Munoz decide who gets the next one at UFC on FOX 2 he wants to fight someone in the meantime that will get him closer to a title shot. It’s unclear who that opponent will be but Dana White did strongly hint in his post-fight interview with Ariel Helwani that Bisping could find himself fighting on the UFC on FOX 2 card. Dana claims that they’re going to add one more “headlining” fight to that two-hour card and it’s “possible” Bisping will be one-half of that match-up.
— The $80,000 in bonus money and the “six-figure” contract Diego Brendao earned for becoming season 14′s featherweight Ultimate Fighter is going to be put to good use. Brendao stated after the fight that he’s going to buy his mom a new house in Brazil.
“For me, part of my mission is over,” Brandao said. “I wanted to give a better life to my family after my dad passed away. I’m so happy to buy [my mother] a house in Brazil. She doesn’t know. I hope she doesn’t have a heart attack.”
He’s also going to give kids in Brazil a better Christmas.
“I feel happy,” Brandao told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) following his win over Dennis Bermudez (7-3 MMA, 0-1 UFC). “I made my promise when I got into the house. Now I want to spend $15,000, which in Brazil means R$30,000. I want to spend it for kids in Brazil who have cancer and on the hospitals. I’m going to visit the hospitals.
“I’m going to make a better Christmas in Brazil for the kids this year because I haven’t had a happy Christmas since my dad passed away.”
Brendao’s idol is Wanderlei Silva and he’s proving to be just like him — a ferocious fighter inside the cage and a great human being outside of it.
— Season 14′s bantamweight winner John Dodson was so ecstatic over his finale win against TJ Dillashaw he asked Dana White to fight again at UFC 141 in a few weeks.
“[I thought,] ‘Am I really the Ultimate Fighter? Is this happening?’ I started pinching myself. I said, ‘John, just do a backflip [off the cage]. If it hits, and you don’t wake up, you’re okay.”
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Dodson. “I’ve been at Jackson’s for 10 years. I’ve been seeing everybody on the rise, and I’ve been waiting for my time to shine.”
“Dana White, put me in there [Dec. 30 at UFC 141]. I’m down to go. I’m ready,” said Dodson. “You saw [a] fast fight [tonight]. I’m ready to go again. Come on, Dana. Put me in there, please.”
Dana hasn’t obliged as far as I know, but he does believe that Dodson is going to be a “star.”
— Nothing is official still, but Dana White told Heavy.com’s Megan Olivi that he has a “very good feeling” that things are going to go well with Showtime in regards to Strikeforce’s future on the network.
Image via Esther Lin for MMA Fighting
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