Мехеммедели Османли өрсөлдөгчөө буулган авч багийнхаа тэнцээг хангав

It’s all even between Michael Bisping and Daniel Cormier after four episodes of The Ultimate Fighter 34.

Team Bisping made it two straight victories with Mehemmedeli Osmanli submitting Artem Belakh in this week’s bantamweight bout. Belakh was Team Cormier’s No. 1 pick, which made Osmanli’s dominant performance all the more satisfying in addition to evening the season series at 2-2.

Watch Osmanli’s first-round finish below.

Heading into the contest, much of the episode’s drama centered around Belakh struggling with his weight cut, something TUF 34 guest blogger Xavier Franklin said was an issue before they even entered the house.

Xavier: Our first week when we got to Vegas, before we got to the house, we’re staying in the hotel. I’ve seen Artem, we were all able to go outside, work out and keep our weight. I’ve seen him in a full sauna suit every day. I’m like, ‘Damn, bro, you’re cutting weight this far.’ So at that moment I knew, I’m like, ‘Oh, he’s super heavy.’

Then when I seen him in the house and then I seen like how he was eating, how his attitude was, like, it was bad.

Belakh certainly seemed to be out of sorts in his disappointing loss to Osmani, with Cormier openly wondering why his fighter was almost exclusively wrestling despite being known as a striking specialist. According to Franklin, Team Bisping was well-aware of Belakh’s ongoing weight-cut battle and Osmani knew it would be a major hindrance to his opponent.

Xavier: ‘Ali’ is very smart, very observant. He was watching a lot of stuff and he said it, too. He was like, ‘Yeah, Artem’s big, but he’s going to cut a lot of weight, too much weight, and he said he’s going to get tired.’ He literally said everything that was going to happen in the fight, word for word. He said, ‘I’m just going to overwhelm him. Pressure him. Make him do too much and then he’s gonna get tired, I’m going to hit him to the body and then I’ll finish him.’ And that’s what he did.

Afterwards, Belakh didn’t seem interested in any post-fight respect from Osmani, though Franklin called it standard post-fight tension as opposed to any particular beef between the fighters. However, prior to the fight, it was obvious Osmani was a favorite target of Team Cormier as they relentlessly jeered him during the weigh-ins.

This just a glimpse of the teams’ genuine animosity for each other.

Xavier: Team Cormier had been messing with us every day. Every time they’ve seen us, they were always talking shit. ‘DC’ is always talking shit to me, his little background dancers are talking, the fighters are talking. He had like 100 people with him. At first we were just like, yeah, whatever, but then after a while it gets annoying because we see each other every day. Like, just kind of be normal sometimes.

None of them liked Ali just because Ali is—he’s Muhammad Ali. You see how he is. He talks, you’ve seen him in the fight talking. That’s how he is outside of the fight with the cameras off. He’d be like, ‘I’m gonna beat your ass, ‘Y’all aren’t good, y’all suck.’ He was chanting, like, ‘Fuck DC.’ We all were, you know what I mean, like friendly banter, but Ali’s a little bit more—he has a big ego. … He’s just stuck in between wanting to be good and bad, but genuinely he’s not a bad person. When the camera’s cut on, he just turns into f*cking Conor McGregor. I don’t know how to explain it. But he’s not a bad person.

An irritated Osmani continued to jaw at Team Cormier after the weigh-ins and even tossed a few water bottles at them for good measure. By that point, Osmani and his teammates had had just about enough.

Xavier: When that happened, it was actually kind of a bigger deal, like Bisping was actually genuinely having to calm Ali down and Ali was just like, ‘What the hell, y’all didn’t have my back.’ At the same time, Ilimbek [Akylbek Uulu] is there and me and Ilimbek is cool, so if Ilimbek gets into it, we get into it. We’re going to have, like, a team fight so they calmed everybody down.

It was like that pretty much the whole season. DC’s team was like—I even snapped a few times at a few people. I don’t know if they’re going to show that in my episode or not, but yeah, I snapped a few times. They’re, like, talking shit to me and I was just chilling. I don’t know what he said, he said something and it just triggered me and I just snapped.

Last week, the fighters were treated to an outing at a Power Slap event; this week, coach Bisping had an entirely different activity in mind for his charges. The fighters were driven out to Adrenaline Mountain, a location just outside of Las Vegas, and taken for a hard run. Franklin and Osmani were the first two up the mountain and when they came back down, Team Bisping was almost a member short as strawweight contestant Mackenzie Stiller had wandered off the path.

Xavier: We ran back down and then Mackenzie had got lost in there. We’re screaming, looking for her, so we had to go run back on the trail because we literally told her—everybody’s cutting weight, we didn’t have much food, so like you’re not really thinking, especially out there, you’re not really thinking—but me, I’m like, ‘Listen, we’re out in the wilderness, I’m not trying to get lost.’ I know there’s cameras and stuff, but Mackenzie, we literally lost her.

Everybody runs back, we finally all make it, and then everybody’s like, ‘Where’s Mackenzie?’ … So everybody looked and they’re like, ‘Shit.’

They go back running down. I said, ‘I’m not going back running.’ I’m tired. No. A bunch of the girls ran, I don’t know who else ran. I think Bisbing and them went to go look. Then she came around the corner and they were like, ‘Oh yeah, there she is.’ So they went and grabbed her and then ran back up.

And they’re like, ‘Where’d you go?’

She was like, ‘Well, you said just keep running straight.’

I said, ‘No, cut across! I didn’t say keep running. Cut across, he told you to cut across.’ But yeah, it was good. It was crazy though.

On next week’s episode we have a strawweight grudge match as Team Cormier’s Tina Black fights Team Bisping’s Natalia Alves.

The Ultimate Fighter 34 streams exclusively on Paramount+ with new episodes every Tuesday.

Unlike most editions of TUF, coaches Michael Bisping and Daniel Cormier will not fight at the conclusion of the season, as both are long retired.

The finalists of the TUF 34 bantamweight and strawweight tournaments will compete for a six-figure UFC contract in the show’s live finale fights. A date for those bouts is yet to be announced.

See The Ultimate Fighter 34 teams below.

Team Bisping

Bantamweights

1. Xavier Franklin (6-1-1, 1 NC), U.S.
2. Mehemmedeli Osmanli (11-1), Azerbaijan
3. Ilimbek Akylbek Uulu (9-3), Kyrgyzstan
4. Marlon Jones (5-0), U.K.

Strawweights

1. Anna Melisano (6-1), U.S.
2. GiGi Canuto (7-1), Brazil
3. Mackenzie Stiller (6-1), U.S.
4. Natalia Alves (8-0), Brazil

Team Cormier

Bantamweights

1. Artem Belakh (11-2), Kazakhstan
2. Micaias Urena (12-4), Dominican Republic
3. Sean Mora (7-1), Cuba
4. Christian Strong (9-1), U.S.

Strawweights

1. Tina Black (15-4, 1 NC), Brazil
2. Delphine Benouaich (7-2), France
3. Melissa Amaya (8-0), U.S.
4. Anita Karim (6-2), Pakistan

Here are the quarterfinal results so far:

Melissa Amaya def. Anna Melisano via submission (rear-naked choke) (R1)

Christian Strong def. Marlon Jones via decision

GiGi Canuto def. Anita Karim via TKO (strikes) (R1)

Mehemmedeli Osmanli def. Artem Belakh via submission (rear-naked choke) (R1)

Advancing to semifinals: Amaya, Strong, Canuto, Osmani

Eliminated: Melisano, Jones, Karim, Belakh

Xavier Franklin is a cast member on The Ultimate Fighter 34 and a guest contributor to MMA Fighting. He also served as Michael Bisping’s unofficial English accent translator on the show.