Efrain Escudero

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1 Profile
2 Early Career
3 The Ultimate Fighter
4 Mixed martial arts record
5 Gallery
6 External links

Profile

Efrain "El Matador" Escudero (born January 15, 1986) is an American professional mixed martial artist.

He stands 5 ft. 10 in. (178 cm) tall and fights in the lightweight division. He made it to the finals of The Ultimate Fighter: Team Nogueira vs. Team Mir and currently fights as a lightweight for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

Early Career

Efrain Escudero made his professional mixed martial arts debut on June 10, 2006 at Rage in the Cage 83 against Chris Collado. Escudero choked out Collado in the first round to start his professional career on a positive note.

Escudero's next five fights all took place in the Rage in the Cage organization with Escudero submitting all but one of his opponents.

By the end of 2007, Escudero upped his record to 7-0 in 2007 and 9-0 in his whole career.

In February 2008, Escudero forced Tommy Wagner to tap to strikes early in the first round.

The Ultimate Fighter

In early 2008, Escudero was selected to participate in The Ultimate Fighter: Team Nogueira vs. Team Mir, the 8th season of MMA reality show, The Ultimate Fighter.

TUF 8 featured 32 mixed martial artists spread over two weight classes, lightweight and light heavyweight.

In Episode 2, Efrain fought Ido Pariente to win a place in the house. Efrain defeated his opponent via first round rear naked choke.

After being selected for Team Nogueira, Efrain was selected by Nogueira in Episode 4 to participate in the first lightweight match-up. He faced and defeated Shane Nelson via second round triangle choke to move into the semi-finals.

After the Nelson victory, Escudero took a lot of flack from one Junie Browning on his wrestling based approach to fights. Browning labelled Efrain as an "Ultimate Wrestler" and continually taunted him throughout the series.

Efrain was given a chance for revenge however in Episode 12 when he would face Junie in the semi finals. Efrain showed himself to be the superior fighter as he matched Junie on the feet and thwarted a number of takedown attempts. In the second round, Efrain scored a takedown of his own before applying a D'Arce choke that had Browning quickly tapping.

The win moved Efrain into the final to face fellow semi-final victor, Phillipe Nover.