As most of the viewers already realized, Al batal Season 2 has all what it takes for an MMA reality television series. With the likes of Mehdi Baghdad accompanied by Jorge Lopez and Ray Elbe assisted by Ole Laursen, these fighters will leave Abu Dhabi with new set of skills no doubt.
Black Team Head Coach Elbe was sharp and clear from the start, taking the fighter selection more serious than anyone. It seems like Al Batal officials had a thing going to make those coaches work even harder than intended!
“Fighter selection was a stressful process, as both coaches earned a cash bonus if they were able to pick the winner of the individual weight classes and coach them to the Al Batal Champion.”
Team Elbe now consists of Bandar Yazan, Dennis Mungai, and Tariq Ismail at lightweight and Khalid Aljohani, Sofiane Seghir, and Younes Mikkis, at middleweight .
“Tariq and Youness were both my first picks in the 70 and 84 kilo division.”
It was finally time for some serious business! The teams are set, the fight is announced, and very little time for the fighters to get ready!
“The outcome of this fight forced us to change our training schedule a bit. Youness was given the morning training session off, because he had to make weight in the evening.”
After both Coaches hand picked there fighters, the first face off was official and Team Elbe’s Youness Makiss from Morocco was set to face Yousef Wehbe from Lebanon. This was the first fight in the new Season! Both middleweights entered the cage but only one of them managed to grab the decision win! From Team Elbe, Mikkis!
“Following the new training schedule, fighters did a ‘walk through’ of the techniques trained during the day of the weigh ins. The guillotine choke was covered specifically in this class, and Youness found himself in the position to finish the bout multiple times “
Now its time to get ready for another war and another step closer to earning the title. Team Elbe snatching the first win and therefore they got to also choose the next battle!
Team Baghdad’s “Sabil Rahali” VS “Khaled Aljohani” from Team Elbe
This fight seems to heated from the start as the trash talking and shoving already made its way to the house!
“It was interesting to see Sabil sneaking a bit of extra food, that was something that even as a coach we were constantly having to monitor.”
Could this be the reason why coach Elbe picked Sabil as an opponent for his team member Aljohani? Could this lack of discipline be what makes a winner and what makes a loser?
Then again, does Coach Ray know that Sabil is almost 4 kilo’s underweight?
