Team Carwin’s Neil Magny defeated Team Nelson’s Cameron Diffley by unanimous decision on episode two of The Ultimate Fighter 16 in the first preliminary fight of the season.
Magny, who defeated Frank Camacho in an entertaining bout to get into the house, was Shane Carwin’s fourth pick when the coaches selected their teams.
Diffley was the jiu-jitsu coach for Forrest Griffin’s team during season seven of TUF, has trained the likes of TUF winner Amir Sadollah, and regularly trains with Nick and Nate Diaz in California, but ultimately that impressive resume didn’t pay off.
Watch new episodes of The Ultimate Fighter 16 every Friday night on Sportsnet
In the first round, Magny began by staying on the outside, using his reach advantage to land punches and leg kicks. But Diffley was eventually able to get the fight to the ground and attempted an armbar and several leg locks to close out the final couple minutes of the round.
The second round was very similar to the first half of the first round with Magny controlling the action and landing strong shots on Diffley without the Team Nelson fighter being able to counter. This time Diffley wasn’t able to take the fight to where he felt most comfortable, the ground, and Magny easily won the round.
Although the first frame could have been scored in Diffley’s favour because of the submission attempts, the judges did not see it that way and awarded Magny the two-round unanimous decision.
Outside of the cage, a lot of the episode featured fighters on both teams questioning Roy Nelson’s coaching and training techniques. The majority of the house felt that his choice to have Deffley fight Magny was a mistake and in the end that proved to be the case.
Also on the episode, the two Canadians on the show, Mike Ricci and Michael Hill, were seen bonding and saying they feel some of the others in the house were lacking in some skill and intelligence.
In typical TUF house fashion, tempers started to heat up when Matt Secor and Julian Lane got into a heated exchange and some of the housemates already began pulling pranks.
Next week, Carwin will decide which two welterweights go head to head.
