Jefferson Creighton Proceeds to Welterweight Semifinals in ‘TUF 33’ Bloodbath

Jefferson Creighton drew enough blood to make diehard Wes Craven fans squirm.

The Team Cormier rep on Tuesday moved one step closer to an Ultimate Fighting Championship contract with a majority decision over Team Sonnen’s Andreeas Binder on Episode 4 of “The Ultimate Fighter 33.” Creighton seized the reins late in the first round, where he hacked open a long diagonal cut on the right side of his opponent’s forehead with a perfectly placed elbow strike. Though the cutman in Binder’s corner managed to stop the bleeding during the 60-second respite between rounds, it soon became problematic. Creighton secured a takedown a little more than a minute into Round 2, jumped to his counterpart’s back and unleashed punches. Blood poured from the wound, as it spilled onto both competitors and puddled on the mat beneath them. Creighton progressed to the back and consolidated his position with a body triangle, then alternated between rear-naked choke attempts—one of them was particularly tight—and effective striking bursts. Advised to ride out the storm by his cornermen, Team Sonnen’s Binder was effectively short-circuited and had to leave his fate to the judges. His hopes for overtime went unrewarded.

“I thought we’d see a third round,” coach Chael Sonnen said. “That was a calculated mistake, and I cannot just put that on Andreeas. We told him wrong.”

Afterward, Creighton reveled in the spoils of victory.

“I was saying the entire time [that] I wanted a bloody, nasty fight, and I got that,” he said. “I deserve to be in there. I’m one of the best welterweights in the world, and I’m going to keep proving that every time I step in that cage.”

The loss was only part of the story for Binder. The Ireland-based judo black belt missed weight by almost five pounds, forcing his coach to negotiate in order to avoid a forfeit. “My body just stopped sweating,” Binder said. Sonnen offered Creighton $1,000 per pound to go ahead with the bout. Creighton countered with $2,500 per pound. Sonnen agreed and forked over $12,500 in an envelope after Binder tipped the scales at 175.5 pounds at the weigh-in.

With his team up 3-1 and still in control of the board, coach Daniel Cormier called upon flyweight Idiris Alibi to face Furkatbek Yokubov in the season’s next bout.

“I think we got the better guy,” Cormier said. “In Kazakhstan, he’s one of the most well-known fighters in that region. People just don’t know him here, but they’ll get to know him because he’s special.”