Sometimes the best stories in sports come naturally. Forget all the wasted effort manufacturing hatred that is not present between opponents, put aside all the attempts to generate a storyline about revenge that is not there, just let life happen and eventually you’ll get the kind of fairytale ending that people will remember for a long time. The final fight of the 15th season of The Ultimate Fighter was one of those tales.
As with many tales, the story of eventual TUF winner Michael Chiesa was born from tragedy. Hours after Chiesa secured his place in the TUF house he was informed that his father had passed away after a battle with leukemia.
In one of the most poignant moments in the run of the TUF franchise, we witnessed a distraught young man leave the house to pay his final respects to the patriarch of the Chiesa family, only to return and go on a run that ended with him earning a UFC contract.
It seemed like destiny that Chiesa would earn the UFC contract, but let’s not forget that he was never the sexy pick to walk away as the winner. He may have been a sentimental favorite, but after the first round he was never a favorite to advance to the next round.
In the quarterfinals he defeated Justin Lawrence by TKO in the sudden victory round after entering that fight as a +250 underdog. That victory sent him to a bout with James Vick in the semifinals where he was once again the underdog at +135.
Showing that the odds meant little to him, Chiesa took the knockout victory and earned his spot in the finals against Al Iaquinta. Again, Chiesa saw the odds stacked against him and again he overcame those odds, putting the favored Iaquinta to sleep with a rear-naked choke.
The win ended an improbable run. You can call it destiny, you can call it luck, you can call it anything you want, but one thing that you can’t deny, no matter how far Chiesa advances in the UFC, his victory in season 15 of TUF was something special.
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