When the UFC returns to England on Saturday night in Nottingham, they’ll be bringing with them a whole host of guys who just plain love punching people unconscious.
The card has a shot to be one of the sleeper hits of the year, with plenty of potential for sleeping and lots of guys getting hit.
Sure, there aren’t major stars on display—Stefan Struve and Dan Hardy are definitely the marquee names—but the night looks full of fireworks. For a free show on a station seen in roughly as many homes as VCRs these days, that’s all a person can ask.
But you know who’s an interesting tale, a star in his own way who’ll mix it up on the undercard before many have taken their seats in the arena or on their couches?
Andy Ogle.
Yup.
Andy Ogle.
Who?
Andy Ogle.
Ogle, a British slugger who missed out on a shot at a UFC contract as part of the largely unremarkable TUF: Live cast, will get to fight in his homeland. And people seem pretty excited about it.
The featherweight made plenty of fans during his run on the show, proving to be a durable competitor and a capable martial artist. He wore his heart on his sleeve, openly gushing about the difficulties of life in the house and being away from his family in a strange place for months on end.
He was a team player in the truest sense of the word as well, loyal to the end towards guys he basically just met.
And people responded.
In fact, people responded to him only slightly less than eventual winner Michael Chiesa, another good-natured battler who was fighting through the death of his father at the time.
Ogle lost out in the quarterfinals on the show, and ran to Dana White to beg for a chance on the Nottingham show. He was injured and couldn’t compete at the TUF: Live finale, and White loved his enthusiasm (as he usually does). Ogle got the call to fight Akira Corassani, and people were largely pleased to see the scrappy kid from Sunderland added to the card.
This reality highlights one of the main issues with The Ultimate Fighter in more recent seasons. As much as people complain about in-house hijinks, about being tired of watching guys with colored mohawks peeing where they shouldn’t be peeing, it’s that time in the house that builds a relationship between fans and the young fighters.
Only Ogle and Chiesa came out of TUF: Live with any sort of following, and they were the only ones who came across well on any personal level. Not to say the rest of the cast was terrible, they were more so just forgettable—which is probably worse.
Back in the day, learning what made guys like Kenny Florian and Chris Leben tick helped give a dimension to the violence they’d produce in the cage. They weren’t animals, they were real people with real lives and real personalities.
The TUF franchise kind of got away from that, culminating with last season being so fight-centric that no one really cared about anyone in the cage. Based on the formula the show established when it was a hit, that’s as far from what the UFC is looking for as one can imagine.
And so, with Ogle, there’s hope for the fan who enjoys seeing good things happen to good people after their time in the TUF house. There was a time when that was the norm, and that’s no longer the case for the most part.
Here’s hoping the Englishman, and the support he’ll get in the arena and from anyone who saw him on the show watching at home, will shed some light on how important that personal connection can be.
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