Saturday, season 18 of The Ultimate Fighter reaches its tournament finals. Miesha Tate and Ronda Rousey have headlined the season to much fanfare. While Tate seems to have emerged from the TV show the popular victor, their bout to decide the bantamweight championship will have to wait until Dec. 28 for UFC 168.
Coaches’ bouts rarely have graced the finale cards, but normally, they happen within a week of the season finale. Having the coaches fight nearly a month later may disassociate the TUF finale from the celebrities who were supposed to make this season of TUF compelling to viewers once again.
Isn’t it baffling that Rousey/Tate II will serve as co-main event for the Silva/Weidman rematch, which will completely overshadow it? It should be, at least a little, since the Rousey/Tate matchup has all the star power to headline an event on its own, for instance TUF finale.
The UFC’s initial offering for the TUF finale was a top-heavy card headlined by a flyweight title bout between Demetrious Johnson and Joseph Benavidez.
After that fight was pushed back to the UFC on FOX 9 card, Nate Diaz and Gray Maynard were left to hold the whole affair up alone. Their headliner is a strong fight, but both fighters are coming off losses, thus, it is hard to argue that the fight has title implications.
The UFC has not seen fit to offset this potential problem by loading up the card with even midtier, recognizable talent.
On the contrary, the majority of the fighters on the undercard (such as Jared Rosholt, Walter Harris, Ryan Benoit, Josh Sampo, Tom Niinimaki and Drew Dober as it stands at the time of publication) are making their promotional debut. That does not even include the non-finalist contestants from this season of TUF who will be making their debut.
To be fair, the UFC has not historically packed TUF finale cards top to bottom with recognizable talent. But one would think that with the flagging TUF ratings, the UFC would work harder than ever to counter the perception that an event under the TUF banner is not worth tuning in for.
To the casual MMA fan that flips over to Fox Sports 1 because there is nothing else on TV Saturday night, the card will hopefully prove exciting. But to the more discerning fan, this undercard card lacks relevant fighters that would convince them to give up their Saturday night plans and tune in.
Even this lapse on the UFC’s part could potentially be forgiven if the latest season of TUF had produced an exciting batch of future contenders.
But it hasn’t.
Dana White has praised the fact that women’s fights on TUF this season have garnered more attention than the men. But that isn’t saying much considering how unremarkable the male fighters were this season.
Two male fighters (Anthony Gutierrez and Cody Bollinger) even missed weight late in the season, a breach of professionalism unprecedented in the show’s history.
Despite their relative success over the men, the females in this series have not proved terribly exciting either.
Fan-favorite Roxanne Modafferi looked outmatched in her fight with Jessica Rakoczy.
Highly-touted veteran Shayna Baszler was out of the tournament early after getting dominated by relative unknown, Julianna Pena.
Jessamyn Duke lost a barnburner to Raquel Pennington that deserved praise. But at this point, there is no indication that the durable Pennington has even made it to the final with Pena.
While the winner of the TUF 18 crown will have definitely earned her spot in the UFC’s ranks, it’s hard to say whether she will have garnered much attention in doing so. All indications are that the undercard won’t do much to boost viewership for their first moment in the Octagon either.
The UFC maintains that TUF is a relevant competition in the face of critical doubt and sad ratings. Yet it has inexplicably allowed this finale card to become a receptacle for unknown debut fighters.
If the UFC really hopes to keep its marquee reality show afloat, it had better start acting like it.
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