UFC Fight Night 18 Finalized With 11 Fights
UFC Fight Night 18
The UFC on Wednesday announced the complete lineup for UFC Fight Night 18, which takes place on April 1st at the Sommet Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
UFN 18 is headlined by WEC welterweight champion Carlos Condit’s UFC debut against Martin Kampmann. The event’s main card also features Efrain Escudero vs. Jeremy Stephens, Ryan Bader vs. Carmelo Marrero, and Junie Browning vs. Cole Miller. Escudero and Bader won the lightweight and light heavyweight tournaments respectively on The Ultimate Fighter 8, while the controversial Browning advanced to the semifinals of the155-pound tournament before falling to Escudero.
UFC Fight Night 18 airs live on Spike TV beginning at 9pm ET and will serve as the lead-in for the debut episode of The Ultimate Fighter 9: US vs. UK.
Seven additional bouts are slated for the evening’s unaired preliminary card.
The complete fight card features:
MAIN CARD (Spike TV – 9pm ET)
- Carlos Condit vs. Martin Kampmann
- Efrain Escudero vs. Jeremy Stephens
- Ryan Bader vs. Carmelo Marrero
- Junie Browning vs. Cole Miller
PRELIMINARY CARD (Un-televised)
- Rafael dos Anjos vs. Tyson Griffin
- Ricardo Almeida vs. Matt Horwich
- Brock Larson vs. Jesse Sanders
- Nissen Osterneck vs. Jorge Rivera
- Rob Kimmons vs. Joe Vedepo
- Tim McKenzie vs. Aaron Simpson
- Ryan Jensen vs. Steve Steinbeiss
For the latest UFC rumors check out the MMAFrenzy.com MMA rumors section.
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I still can’t believe that Tyson Griffen is on the un-aired portion of the card. Geez. It will be very interesting to see how Condit will fair against Kampman. I would give the slight favor to Condit.
I see Condit keeping it on the feet for the first part of first round and then taking the fight to the mat and submitting Kampman in the second. For Efrain, I see him grinding it out to a decesion with him taking Stephens down followed some GnP for all three rounds.
seems like it has the potential of being a solid free card. looking forward to gauging Condit and Larson…see if they mix with the UFC.
Condit will get stompped….he will NOT want to keep it on the feet…once he feels Kampman’s power..he will shoot and try to take it to the ground where he has a better shot at winning, but I think Kampman will KO or TKO him in round 1
I can easily see Efrain becoming the champ at this weight class..but right now, he is still learning, and I think he will get caught… Stephens is very agressive and hits hard..
They will show atleast 1 undercard fight – I hope its Tyson’s fight.. but the undercard is stacked too with Larson, Almeida/Horwich, and Tyson.. 3 good undercard fights!! Cant wait to watch
what a joke Tyson Griffin to the uncard after a decision loss to Sean Sherk??
Martin Kampmann
Efrain Escudero hope he does good in division i dont see jeremy ever become champ so ill go with efrian
Ryan Bader
Junie Browning
Tyson Griffin (why the heck is he on the undercard?)
Ricardo Almeida
Brock Larson
nothing to say one the rest
Jorge Rivera (can’t tell, can’t find much on Osterneck besides one loss in wec)
I really like Nissen in this fight. He looked like he had pretty solid stand-up in his fight against Rosholt. Rosholt’s face looked mangled after that fight.
thought almedia and tyson would of been on the main card!
i agree they lose one fight then they aren’t on the main card.
that sucks!
There’s only four fights scheduled for the main card, one is Condit Kampmann, which deserves to be there, and two of the other three are the TUF winners. While I can see how a serious MMA fan, like the ones on this site, would be frustrated at Junie getting the TV time over Griffin or Almeida, to the casual fan the opposite could be equally frustrating. Lets face it, the serious fans are going to watch regardless of whether it’s Junie, Tyson, or Ricardo getting the first fight on TV. The UFC knows that, so they are going to do what they feel is the right choice to go after the casual fans… hence, Junie gets the nod.
Absolute garbage that we have to watch Junie Browning fight and not Tyson Griffin. Neither cole Miller or Browning is the caliber of Griffin. I guess the UFC is catering to people who are amused and entertained by piss-poor fighters that have figured out a way to make it. Damn I hope browning loses so we don’t ever have to watch him again.
Like Justin said above, the hardcore fans, although opposed to watching Junie, will watch it either way and it will draw in the casual fans because people know how Junie is because of his outlandish antics of TUF. It sucks, it really does but hopefully after a few more years when MMA will become fully appreciated as a sport and held in the same regards as football and basketball, we will not have to put up with such marketing gimicks.
Guess what? You get the very same marketing gimmicks from the NFL and NBA. Who gets the Monday night games toward the end of the season? Not the games that MEAN anything to playoff race…the teams that are “draws” like the Cowboys.
Same with the NBA. Lebron is a great player, but that team isn’t a championship contender. And yet they are always on tv because people feel like they KNOW Lebron.
If you’re hoping things are going to magically change as MMA gets more popular, it won’t. It will only get worse because they won’t have to try as hard as they did to get here today.
The Cavs have the 2nd best winning percentage in the NBA and Lebron is agruably the best and most exciting player today. Also, in the NFL they do move games around toward the end of the season if they do have playoff implications (e.g. Panthers vs Giants was moved to the sunday night game instead of the originaly scheduled 4 pm time). I do actually hope that people will tune in to watch MMA not because of people’s actions outside the ring (or cage) but inside.
What I was getting at in my comment is that casual fans may actually know who Junie is, vs. Almeida or Griffin they may not. That was also not related to Junie’s actions on TUF, but the simple fact that he was on there.
Ok, understood. On a personal side note, the only reason why I remember Junie from the show was because of his actions and the 3 times (I think 3 times) that he should have gotten booted from the show. I really can’t even name the other semi-finalist that lost to Nover. I guess I inadvertantly linked my opinion to your comment, sorry about that.
Phillipe beat George Roop in the semis.
UFC has some circus like things going on ATM…