Jason “Mayhem” Miller and Michael Bisping have been selected as the coaches of the 14th season of The Ultimate Fighter, which will begin taping this summer and air in the fall.
The selection of Bisping, who won Season 3 of The Ultimate Fighter and previously coached on Season 9, is no surprise: Bisping is well known to the Ultimate Fighter audience and had been discussed as a likely coach for the upcoming season.
However, the news, that first appeared first on The Underground, that his opposing coach will be Miller comes as something of a surprise. Miller only recently signed with the UFC after leaving Strikeforce, and the UFC usually chooses longtime UFC veterans as the coaches of its reality show.
But Miller makes a lot of sense after Chael Sonnen, who was believed to be the UFC’s first choice to coach next season, ran into problems with the state athletic commissions in both California and Nevada. Miller is gregarious and talkative and already has experience with reality television as the host of Bully Beatdown.
Miller had been slated to fight Aaron Simpson in July, but now he’ll wait until December, when he takes on Bisping, to step into the Octagon. His fight with Bisping — and his banter with Bisping — should be entertaining, although it isn’t the middleweight No. 1 contender fight that a Sonnen-Bisping bout would have been.
Miller and Bisping are expected to coach a cast of bantamweights and featherweights in the upcoming season.
Ten days before their co-main event bout at