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By: Shawn Ennis, MMATorch Senior Columnist
Gastelum showed early that he was not afraid of Uriah Hall, going after the front-running KO artist with standing strikes and landing often until scoring an easy-looking takedown three minutes into the fight. Hall was able to work back to his feet, but by that time he had all but lost the round, ending the last minute with little fanfare.
Hall was painfully overconfident in the first round, and it seemed as though he had learned his lesson in the first minute of the second round, as he landed a few effective strikes against Gastelum. That trend didn't last, though, as Hall tried to impersonate Anderson Silva, dropping his hands and backing against the cage to bait his opponent. Gastelum didn't try to strike but instead took Hall down. Hall worked back to the feet and they clinched for a minute until Hall landed a trip takedown of his own. Hall's best offense in the round, though, came after they worked back to the feet where he was able to land a nasty-looking suplex. Gastelum proved quick to recover though, and initiated a clinch to end the round.
The third round was the closest of the fight as the action both on the feet and on the ground was back-and-forth. Gastelum landed some takedowns as Hall continued to use the worst strategy he could possibly have employed by backing up and baiting Gastelum. Hall was able to escape, and rather impressively, a few times, but neither fighter had a lot of effective offense in what was likely the deciding round.
In the end, Kelvin Gastelum walked away with the split decision win to take the title of this season's Ultimate Fighter.
If I may editorialize for a moment, Uriah Hall cost himself this fight. He showed several times that he was more than capable of dealing with Gastelum on the ground, but he continued to fight in a way that made it easy for Gastelum to score points and get into a position that was going to gain him favor with the judges. Hall may or may not be the real deal (it's always hard to tell how good a fighter really is judging only by their time on the show,) but if he continues to fight like Anderson Silva without being as good as Anderson Silva, the one sure thing is that he will never live up to the hype he got during this season.
That being said, it's hard to take anything away from Gastelum. There was no question what he was going to do, and he came and did it. He also showed that he has quite a chin, taking some big shots from Hall and walking through them. It will certainly be interesting to see where each fighter goes from here. It would be hard to be surprised by almost any result.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
STAFF COLUMNISTS: Shawn Ennis - Jason Amadi
Frank Hyden - Rich Hansen
Chris Park - Matt Pelkey
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