Pannie Kianzad Talks Making TUF 28 Roster, Team Gastleum & Fighting at 145lbs

Pannie Kianzad is competing on the UFC Ultimate Fighter 28, where she is one of eight featherweights competing for a UFC contract.

The Invicta FC veteran had no plans to try out for the UFC Ultimate Fighter 28, but then one phone call changed everything.

“No, I haven’t really (processed how the last few months went). I just like go with the flow, I haven’t really gotten anything. I just like…I mean I planned to do a lot of fights this year and I just didn’t know I’d end up like this, I got like a call and they said ‘hey, do you want to come out for the tryouts.’ I’m like ‘yeah, why not, I have nothing to do.’ Then it ended being a great experience,” Kianzad says in an exclusive interview with Fightful’s James Lynch.

Kianzad has competed on episode two of the reality show, defeating Katharina Lehner by unanimous decision.

A victorious Kianzad has already had the opportunity to watch the show and the fighter admits it was strange to watch herself on TV.

“Like, I’m pretty excited to see how I’m like…in other episodes, how I come off when it comes to my accent because I know to get a lot of the guys, the girls and I talked about the language barriers. That was a huge problem, but not a huge problem but you can definitely see that we had language barriers. We were like…half of us were international (fighters), it was pretty cool to see that…I actually didn’t think that I had that much of a language barrier. I watched the episode and I’m like that’s not so bad, I don’t want to come off like I’m sounding weird or something. It was pretty strange seeing yourself on TV, it was to be honest,” says Kianzad.

UFC Ultimate Fighter 28 airs every Wednesday Night on Fox Sports 1 and the finale is scheduled to happen this November on Fox Sports 1.