Noooo those hollow fights were completely and utterly filler. Not in the manga AT ALL.

Kind of funny what's it been like 9 months since we've had real bleach and the manga still isn't really ahead of the anime. If all the content was animated no filler no dragging out what-so-ever I'd say maybe there'd be 15-20 episodes of content seeing how 5 chapters of bleach fighting covers about 1 well animated episode. Honestly the ichigo/ulquirra fight is something that could probably be started and ended in one episode.