San Antonio, TX — Ukraine’s Daniil Donchenko is your welterweight winner for The Ultimate Fighter Season 33.
After his finale fight with Rodrigo Sezinando was pushed back from UFC 319, Donchenko (12-2) instead got the job done inside of a round at Noche UFC on Saturday. The knockout win marks Donchenko’s entry to the UFC, and is precisely what he had hoped for.
“The way how I finished the fight, the way how I fought, it’s exactly how you should enter the UFC. I’m happy I did my job very well tonight,” he told media outlets including Cageside Press backstage following the bout. “Now all the fans will know, if I will start a fight inside the UFC octagon, it will be brutal.”
Brutal is something he was already known for, Donchenko added. But now he’s in the UFC, on a larger platform. “I started to create my image, my picture in the UFC in a good way. And it’s exactly how I am.”
Asked about the experience of fighting in the octagon for the first time, the new TUF champ admitted that “I’m so sad I don’t have cool UFC Noche gloves, just black ones.” He’d go on to add, however, that “it’s amazing.” While Donchenko noted that every fighter dreams of making it to the UFC, he didn’t feel overwhelmed on Saturday. “It was like my octagon. Nothing new, it was mine already. I was like at home, I’m like a fish in the water in this octagon.”
Watch the full Noche UFC post-fight press conference with Daniil Donchenko above.
