Bader, Magalhaes Vie for TUF Stardom
Joe Myers Dec 12, 2008
“The Ultimate Fighter” reality series has made mixed martial arts
stars out of many of its alumni, from UFC light heavyweight
champion Forrest
Griffin to UK poster boy Michael
Bisping. Ryan Bader
and Vinicius
Magalhaes hope to be next in line to climb the ladder of
success.
Bader (7-0) and Magalhaes (2-2) each won three fights on season eight and will meet in the light heavyweight final at “The Ultimate Fighter 8” Finale on Saturday at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas.
“My first goal is to become ‘The Ultimate Fighter,’” Bader says. “I
have to win [Saturday] before I can think about what I want to do
next. I just want to keep chipping away and move my way up through
the ranks. I don’t settle for mediocrity. I want to be the best at
what I do.”
A four-time gold medalist at the Brazilian jiu-jitsu world championships, the 24-year-old Magalhaes planned to be in this position, one win away from a six-figure contract with the UFC.
Bader, a two-time All-American wrestler at Arizona State, believes his time on “The Ultimate Fighter” made him a more complete fighter. Training daily under UFC interim heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira was one of the perks.
“I learned so much while I was doing the show,” Bader says. “[Nogueira] has such a great work ethic and really trains like a professional. I really improved my jiu-jitsu game working with [Nogueira] and [assistant coach] Daniel Valverde. They tailored what they taught me to my style of fighting, and I picked up some good submissions. I also learned some good things about elbows and knees in the muay Thai clinch when [UFC middleweight champion] Anderson Silva was there.”
Trevor Lally -- who trains Bader at Arizona Combat Sports in Tempe, Ariz. -- says Bader’s improvement came not only in his skill set but in the mental side of the game.
Magalhaes hopes Bader tests
his stand-up skills.
“The biggest difference in Ryan now is his overall confidence,”
Lally says. “I’m not sure if it’s because of who he fought when he
was on the show or who he trained with, but you can see he’s more
confident now. I’ve had several fighters be on ‘The Ultimate
Fighter’ and come back worse off than when they left, but Ryan’s
better now, and he’s a lot more confident.”
Bader admits living in “The Ultimate Fighter” house was a unique experience and says the show’s producers did a good job of presenting events as they happened.
“Nobody was really edited badly when the shows came on TV,” he says. “They edited some little things, but everything that happened really went on. Everything was real. When I first got there, I knew I had to be prepared to fight. Once I won to get on the show, I relaxed a little bit, and the first couple of days in the house were exciting.”
Boredom, however, soon set in.
“After the first week, everybody’s already told all the stories they have, and you’ve heard everybody else’s stories,” Bader says. “You’ve gone and sat in the hot tub and played all the basketball you want. That’s when things start to get crazy. You just have to try and focus on your goals and keep your sanity. You definitely have to keep your wits about you.”
Bader’s road to the final started with an arm-triangle submission of Kyle Kingsbury. He then knocked out Tom Lawlor in the quarter-finals and earned a unanimous decision over 28-year-old Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Eliot Marshall in the semis.
“My toughest fight was [the semi-final against Marshall],” Bader says. “I knew he was a threat if the fight went to the ground, and the timing of the fight was bad. It was right at the end of the taping, and everybody just wanted to get out of there. My focus wasn’t all there, and I felt like I gave a lackluster effort.”
Bader faces a tough test in Magalhaes, a Brazilian who coaxed a tapout from the season’s most experienced cast member, Krzysztof Soszynski, in the semi-finals.
“Everybody was predicting Krzysztof to be in the finals against Ryan Bader,” says Magalhaes, who also submitted Jules Bruchez en route to the final.
Keeping his identity as one of the 205-pound finalists secret presented a challenge all its own.
“If they asked if I was fighting [on] the finale card, I said, ‘Who knows? Maybe nobody’s going to fight,’” Magalhaes says. “It was kind of hard just to keep to myself. Some guys are even annoying, saying, ‘Who [are] you going to fight on the card? Are you going to be on the main card? Are you going to be on the undercard?’ [They] just assumed I lost the fight [to Soszynski].”
Even though Magalhaes has just four professional fights to his credit, Bader knows he will have his hands full once the cage door closes behind him.
“I watched Vinny and Krzysztof closely while we were in the house,” Bader says. “I felt both of them had the potential to be where I wanted to be. Vinny has a slick ground game, and I’ll have to be careful of his submission skills, but I’ve got a wrestling background.”
The unbeaten Bader sees holes in Magalhaes’ still-developing game.
“One of Vinny’s weaknesses is his stand-up, and I think I’ll have an edge if we stay on our feet,” he says. “Also, I think I have the edge in mental toughness. I’ve got more experience, and I feel like I had the tougher fights to get to the finals.”
Magalhaes hopes Bader tests his stand-up skills.
“If he tries to stand up for 15 minutes, we’re gonna stand up for 15 minutes,” he says. “I’ve been working on my strikes for the last six months, and Bader’s not a striker, so I don’t know why he has that big of an advantage on his feet. I think as soon as I start to beat him up, he’s going to become a wrestler, and he’s gonna try and take me down. And once he takes me down, he’s gonna be on my game.”
Lally sees Saturday’s showdown as a clash of styles Bader is more than capable of winning.
“A fight is a fight,” Lally says. “Sometimes, when things get tough, people go back to what they know best. Maybe when the heat is on, Ryan will take him down. Who knows? I do know one thing, though. Vinny is going to have to fight Ryan. My guy’s battle-tested. Ryan fought guys on the show who relied on jiu-jitsu, and he won. These two guys will try to impose their will on each other, and I think my guy will win that fight.”
Bader (7-0) and Magalhaes (2-2) each won three fights on season eight and will meet in the light heavyweight final at “The Ultimate Fighter 8” Finale on Saturday at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas.
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A four-time gold medalist at the Brazilian jiu-jitsu world championships, the 24-year-old Magalhaes planned to be in this position, one win away from a six-figure contract with the UFC.
“When I went to the show, I was expecting to be in the finals,” he
says. “Not that I didn’t respect anybody, but I [don’t] go to any
competition just to be another competitor. I always go to win.”
Bader, a two-time All-American wrestler at Arizona State, believes his time on “The Ultimate Fighter” made him a more complete fighter. Training daily under UFC interim heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira was one of the perks.
“I learned so much while I was doing the show,” Bader says. “[Nogueira] has such a great work ethic and really trains like a professional. I really improved my jiu-jitsu game working with [Nogueira] and [assistant coach] Daniel Valverde. They tailored what they taught me to my style of fighting, and I picked up some good submissions. I also learned some good things about elbows and knees in the muay Thai clinch when [UFC middleweight champion] Anderson Silva was there.”
Trevor Lally -- who trains Bader at Arizona Combat Sports in Tempe, Ariz. -- says Bader’s improvement came not only in his skill set but in the mental side of the game.
Photo by
Sherdog.com
his stand-up skills.
Bader admits living in “The Ultimate Fighter” house was a unique experience and says the show’s producers did a good job of presenting events as they happened.
“Nobody was really edited badly when the shows came on TV,” he says. “They edited some little things, but everything that happened really went on. Everything was real. When I first got there, I knew I had to be prepared to fight. Once I won to get on the show, I relaxed a little bit, and the first couple of days in the house were exciting.”
Boredom, however, soon set in.
“After the first week, everybody’s already told all the stories they have, and you’ve heard everybody else’s stories,” Bader says. “You’ve gone and sat in the hot tub and played all the basketball you want. That’s when things start to get crazy. You just have to try and focus on your goals and keep your sanity. You definitely have to keep your wits about you.”
Bader’s road to the final started with an arm-triangle submission of Kyle Kingsbury. He then knocked out Tom Lawlor in the quarter-finals and earned a unanimous decision over 28-year-old Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Eliot Marshall in the semis.
“My toughest fight was [the semi-final against Marshall],” Bader says. “I knew he was a threat if the fight went to the ground, and the timing of the fight was bad. It was right at the end of the taping, and everybody just wanted to get out of there. My focus wasn’t all there, and I felt like I gave a lackluster effort.”
Bader faces a tough test in Magalhaes, a Brazilian who coaxed a tapout from the season’s most experienced cast member, Krzysztof Soszynski, in the semi-finals.
“Everybody was predicting Krzysztof to be in the finals against Ryan Bader,” says Magalhaes, who also submitted Jules Bruchez en route to the final.
Keeping his identity as one of the 205-pound finalists secret presented a challenge all its own.
“If they asked if I was fighting [on] the finale card, I said, ‘Who knows? Maybe nobody’s going to fight,’” Magalhaes says. “It was kind of hard just to keep to myself. Some guys are even annoying, saying, ‘Who [are] you going to fight on the card? Are you going to be on the main card? Are you going to be on the undercard?’ [They] just assumed I lost the fight [to Soszynski].”
Even though Magalhaes has just four professional fights to his credit, Bader knows he will have his hands full once the cage door closes behind him.
“I watched Vinny and Krzysztof closely while we were in the house,” Bader says. “I felt both of them had the potential to be where I wanted to be. Vinny has a slick ground game, and I’ll have to be careful of his submission skills, but I’ve got a wrestling background.”
The unbeaten Bader sees holes in Magalhaes’ still-developing game.
“One of Vinny’s weaknesses is his stand-up, and I think I’ll have an edge if we stay on our feet,” he says. “Also, I think I have the edge in mental toughness. I’ve got more experience, and I feel like I had the tougher fights to get to the finals.”
Magalhaes hopes Bader tests his stand-up skills.
“If he tries to stand up for 15 minutes, we’re gonna stand up for 15 minutes,” he says. “I’ve been working on my strikes for the last six months, and Bader’s not a striker, so I don’t know why he has that big of an advantage on his feet. I think as soon as I start to beat him up, he’s going to become a wrestler, and he’s gonna try and take me down. And once he takes me down, he’s gonna be on my game.”
Lally sees Saturday’s showdown as a clash of styles Bader is more than capable of winning.
“A fight is a fight,” Lally says. “Sometimes, when things get tough, people go back to what they know best. Maybe when the heat is on, Ryan will take him down. Who knows? I do know one thing, though. Vinny is going to have to fight Ryan. My guy’s battle-tested. Ryan fought guys on the show who relied on jiu-jitsu, and he won. These two guys will try to impose their will on each other, and I think my guy will win that fight.”
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