Welterweight quarterfinal action resumed on episode six of The Ultimate Fighter: Team Cormier vs. Team Sonnen with the third matchup of the 170-pound tournament.
Last week, it was determined that Team Cormier’s Alex Sanchez would face Team Sonnen’s Matt Dixon.
Sanchez is a 15-3 pro from Mexico, while Dixon is an 11-1 American whose lone loss was during a 2020 appearance on Dana White’s Contender Series.
Spoilers below for TUF 33, Episode 6.
Daniel Cormier brought in a pair of former UFC champions and TUF alumni, Rose Namajunas and Raquel Pennington, to help his team train.
Pennington was a cast member on TUF 18, which was the first season to feature women’s fighters (there was an eight-fighter men’s tournament that season plus an eight-fighter women’s tourney). Pennington didn’t win that season but has gone on to fight in the UFC 19 times and won a bantamweight title in 2024.
Namajunas advanced to the final of TUF 20, the first season to feature exclusively women, and it introduced the strawweight division to the UFC. Namajunas lost in the finale to Carla Esparza for the inaugural 115-pound title but later went on to become a two-time champion.
Chael Sonnen also brought in a guest coach, TUF alumni Ed Herman. The longtime UFC veteran advanced to the finals of the third season of TUF all the way back in 2006 but lost to Kendall Grove in the finale. Herman ended up fighting 27 times in the UFC.
After getting to know Dixon and Sanchez and learning about their background stories, it was time for the fighters to cut weight and then step into the cage. Both fighters successfully hit the scales and prepared for what they assumed would be a striking match.
Sanchez, 31, was entering the TUF tournament on a seven-fight pro winning streak, while Dixon, 29, had earned three consecutive first-round stoppages after falling short on the Contender Series five years ago.
Dixon had a four-inch arm reach advantage and frequently switched stances. He would land hard body kicks when standing southpaw and traditional boxing combinations from orthodox.
He was also the fighter pressing forward the entire time as Sanchez looked to counter despite his coaches instructing him to attack, and eventually Dixon found the mark with a right straight followed by a left hook that knocked Sanchez down. A few follow-up strikes later and the bout was halted before the end of Round 1.
Cormier was upset his fighter was backpedalling for the majority of the bout and let Sanchez and his team have it in the locker room with a fiery speech after the bout.
The final flyweight matchup of the quarterfinals was made official.
Team Sonnen’s Roybert Echeverria, 10-2 from Venezuela, will take on Team Cormier’s Tumelo Manyamala, 6-1 from South Africa, in a 125-pound showdown.
