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The Ultimate Fighter’s ceiling for potential due to poor casting
By Zach Arnold | June 17, 2010
With Court McGee vs. Kris McCray happening this Saturday night on the TUF 11 Finale on Spike TV, it seems more and more people are wondering if The Ultimate Fighter is suffering from a law of diminishing returns on developing legitimate prospects who could become champions one day in the UFC like McGee’s predecessors on the show did.
A passage from a discussion between Josh Gross & Jordan Breen on the SI podcast:
JORDAN BREEN: “When you think about what the show was originally designed for, if you re-watch the first season the intimations and the implications being made about what it means to be The Ultimate Fighter is the idea that you go on to be a Forrest Griffin or a Rashad Evans or whatever. These guys don’t have that kind of potential. I think Kris McCray, if he can work on the cardio a bit get kind of a strategic element to his game, he can stick around the UFC. And I think Court McGee will be there for a while, but neither one of these guys, I mean… we’re waiting for a Middleweight title fight coming up between Chael Sonnen & Anderson Silva. The gulf between Court McGee & Kris McCray and Chael Sonnen & Anderson Silva is an ENORMOUS one and far more dramatic than the gulfs we’ve seen in the past between guys coming off the show and the champions that happen to rule in the division at that point in time. Really, one of the weaker season in terms of talent all around and a final that I don’t want to say it’s tainted but you know Nick Ring, most people felt his fight on the show with Court McGee should have been a round-a-piece, that he didn’t deserve to win, but Nick Ring probably was the most talented guy on the show and because of injury issues you know he doesn’t get to compete in the final, which is extremely unfortunate. I think both of those guys stick around the UFC for a while but it’s not going to be a season of The Ultimate Fighter that we look back and say, wow, look at what it gave us.”
JOSH GROSS: “We haven’t had one of those in a while. And the thing about guys like Forrest Griffin, Diego Sanchez, Joe Stevenson, I mean all these guys who are well-established fighters who had careers outside of The Ultimate Fighter well before they were on the show and it was sort of just a stepping stone for them at least promotionally. As far as like identifying prospects, guys with five fights and under, I mean I don’t think this show’s delivered in any kind of way in terms of fighters on that level. The UFC does a much better of finding prospects and putting them directly into their shows than filtering them through The Ultimate Fighter, don’t you think?”
JORDAN BREEN: “I absolutely agree. The only kind of guy The Ultimate Fighter serves a purpose for at this point in time is guys who just don’t actually have experience but for whatever reason their learning curve is a bit screwed. A guy like Amir Sadollah for instance, who had basically no MMA experience but had enough skills and had enough requisite toughness to be able to take out guys like Gerald Harris and CB Dollaway and Tim Credeur and guys who actually had considerable experience or relatively talented and belonged on the show. Apart from unearthing guys like that, it really doesn’t serve a whole lot of purpose which now when they go into these tryouts, they’re telling guys you got to have at least three fights, you’ve had to had at least four fights, they’re actually kind of undermining the most effective guys that they were getting out of it. If a good guy already has three, four, five fights, he can just get signed already. We know this. We know that these guys aren’t going to pass on the potential Next Big Thing as a talent to put them on The Ultimate Fighter, so I do think that it’s kind of weird that really now they’ve really narrowed the margins and pigeon-holed themselves into taking a specific kind of guy, a guy who has enough experience but in that experience hasn’t really been so impressive that he gets signed in the first place, so yeah I’m definitely with you. The way that The Ultimate Fighter’s being cast now definitely undermines the ability to find really those sorts of Rashad Evans, Forrest Griffin type characters.”
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 20 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
The best guy will win the show. Court Mcgee.
I’m from VA so I’ll be rooting for McCray. He’s got a great chin and looks very strong for 185, but I think Mcgee is better almost everywhere.
Jordan talked about how the most talented guy on the show was Nick Ring. I know he has the knee from hell and all, but to me Court Mcgee made him look bad in their fight. Not the injury.
With his work ethic I think Court can go far.
I think McGee was one of the four or five prospects going into the house but was overlooked early by the editors of the show maybe because they were trying to portray him as the underdog fighter.
Will ever get a title shot like Florian, Griffin, Evans or Sanchez? No and think that’s what Breen and Gross were pointing out that TUF has failed to build any relevant title contenders for …maybe the past 8 seasons.
Another problem for TUF ( besides whiffing on guys like Tyron Woodley)is that fact that Bellator and to a lesser extent Strikeforce are signing soild propsects that in 2005-07 may have gone the rout of TUF
“TUF has failed to build any relevant title contenders for …maybe the past 8 seasons”
If Roy Nelson can beat Dos Santos, he is well on his way to a title shot.
Unless he stumbles badly, Ryan Bader absolutely will get a title shot in the next couple of years.
TUF 5 produced a bunch of guys who will probably get title shots, starting with Manny Gamburyan at 145 and Gray Maynard at 155. Nate Diaz will probably wind up getting one too somewhere down the road.
If Roy Nelson got a real (not Interim, North American, Silver, whatever) UFC heavyweight title shot, I would quit the internet and send someone a $100 check to anyone willing to take a bet. That is how strongly I feel that it will never happen.
Nelson/Dos Santos = most asinine matchmaking since, I dont know… Shogun/Coleman 2.
Just stupid.
Actually I was trying to wrap my mind around the reasoning behind this the other day, and then I remembered that Dana hates Nelson.
Neslon is an curiously interesting and capable gatekeeper.
I’d somewhat haltingly pick him over the Yvels and Crocops.
A UFC strap isn’t in his future though.
But there’s still plenty to keep him busy and entertaining if they put him in positions that fit him.
If Dos Santos can’t stop Nelson’s takedowns, why waste the promotional money on him to lose to the other big wrasslers?
… Vs. Dos Santos isn’t one of those.
Umm, I’m sorry Alan. I’m not sure that I understand your question.
I dont think Nelson can take Dos Santos down.
Dos Santos doesn’t seem to be easy take down pickens as far as I recall.
I figure Dos Santos is gonna KO Neslon eventually.
Even if Nelson tackled Dos Santos and got down at some point I dont think he’d beat him there before being stood up again one way or the other.
I assume you mean why waste money on Nelson to not be in title contention?
Well, he aint the coldest beer in the fridge but he’s still interesting enough and a better fighter than a few guys who fluff out the HW roster like Struve, Herring, Al Turk, Hardonk, Rothwell, etc.
If somebody has to be a gatekeeper, he seems to me to be one of the better ones of that lot.
Look: Dos Santos is a big Brazilian who doesn’t speak english. IE he is not a dude who is going to translate into buyrates the same way someone like Lesnar does or Carwin or Velasquez theoretically do. Furthermore, what great wrestler has he beaten? His loss is to a stumpy grappler, so it is a question mark still. Nelson can wrestle some and is skilled enough on his feet to not be destroyed in 20 seconds. Personally, I think its a great fight – the perfect gatekeeper for Dos Santos to see if he really can compete with the big boys in that division. If he can’t beat Nelson, he’s not worth any additional time or money.
Meanwhile, Nelson is a gatekeeper. That’s his position in MMA going back for years. If he fought Rothwell again, it would be another 3 round slugfest, and he might very well lose again. Arlovski banged him out. The guys at the top would bang him out, no problem. He would need to win a lot more than a Dos Santos fight to be in contention for a world title bout.
Oh Okay, I’m seeing your position.
You think Nelson is pretty good.
I agree, although you seem to think he’s even better then I’m ready to give him credit for.
🙂
I’m under the impression that Dos Santos has already proven to be elite among his current peers. IE: in that 4-5 member round robin with Carwin, Valesquez, Lesnar, and formerly Duffee.
I’d also assume since Dos Santos is brazilian and trains with the nogs and such that outside of his heavy and respectable hands he’s not completely clueless on the ground.
We’ve seen some elite wrestlers like sonnen take it to some bjj guys recently. But historically bjj guys have caught wrestlers just as much, maybe more.
Not even so far back as Hendo and Lindlands last fights.
But is Nelson supposed to be a mob ass wrestler anyway?
He doesn’t look built like one.
I agree with you that Nelson is pretty good, but I’m not ready to say he’s as good as your saying.
Although he pulls it off surprisingly well, That physique has got to be a detriment to really topping out and fully realizing the potential buried in there.
Maybe the fight wont be as lopsided and stupid as I expect. But with GG and Verdum at the top of Dos Santos’ recent record I think he’s proven his place near the top of the pecking order.
I think he should be fighting either the other guys at that last step to a shot, or at least profile fights to keep warm like beating up cheik kongo or something.
Roy Nelson on the other hand is too good of a second teir guy to throw him under the Dos Santos bus for no reason. He should be trashing other gate keepers and thinning that herd IMO.
If Nelson gets whipped maybe it will be the impedice to make him realize that he’s not being all he can be by walking around like that. I could have swore that I saw a picture or vid of Nelson a little while ago of him earlier career and he was chubby but not the butterball that he is today.
Then again maybe he’ll kick the shit out of Santos like you said. 🙂
This is MMA.
BTW “impedice” = trademarked by me.
🙂
(I was looking for a word there that was eluding me and forgot to fix that before posting it. I still cant see half the text box on here for some reason. But I’m always dicing around with my FF setting so I’m sure its me.)
“Another problem for TUF ( besides whiffing on guys like Tyron Woodley)is that fact that Bellator and to a lesser extent Strikeforce are signing soild propsects that in 2005-07 may have gone the rout of TUF.”
It still amazes me that out of all the low rate fighters they put on TUF from America that season, they passed on Woodley.
10 bucks says Woodley will end up in the UFC anyway.
I think we all know why Woodley didn’t make it.
They wanted to create the next generation of UK poster boys and didn’t want Woodley to use his wrestling to demolish their precious Brits.
It’s no coincidence that TUF 9 was the only season of TUF where there wasn’t a single guy without outstanding wrestling credentials. They might as well have called that season “TUF 9: Wrestlers Need Not Apply”.
I think Ryan Bader can be a title contender at LHW once he rounds out his skills a little more, he is much bigger and a better wrestler than Rashad Evans is.
As usual, I think Gross is overstating his case against Zuffa.
TUF still produces quality fighters, it just doesn’t produce as many of them as it did in the first couple of seasons. The reason for that is because there are so many more options for young fighters today than there were in 2005. Guys like Forrest and Diego simply aren’t available any more because they have all been scooped up by Bellator, Strikeforce, and a myriad of other promotions that did not exist in 2005.
Even with the increased competition for young and/or underexposed talent, the UFC has still managed to get guys like Roy Nelson, Ryan Bader, & Efrain Escudero out of the show recently. That’s not too shabby.
while I am loving all the new massive amount of articles, I’m not sure how I feel about reading what Jordan Breen thinks this much
I think one of the major problems is that Mixed martial artists are no longer fighting their guts out in front of an audiences lucky to be in the triple digits for a few hundred bucks. The ultimate fighter used to be a big opportunity to make a lot of money, live in a house for free, and train at a great center (most didn’t at that time) Now, most of these guys are already training at great centers and getting paid moderate salaries. You can’t expect any high caliber athletes to give up 2 months where they can’t talk to anyone outside the house or do anything except train for virtually no money and they aren’t even offering great coaches anymore. UFC needs to stop being greedy and pay these fighters for their time and put REAL coaches on it. Guys like koscheck have no business coaching a team just because they wanna grab up more drama for their show. Also, they need to let these fighters out and talk to people outside the house, otherwise they’re gonna keep getting these mediocre ‘ultimate fighters’. I disagree with the radio guys on this, all the guys in the early TUF’s were inexperienced, guys like mac danzig had all the experience in the world but haven’t come out on top, the reason isn’t because the guys they’re getting are unexperienced, ultimate fighter is supposed to be about discovering talent, it’s because they aren’t getting the best inexperienced guys because they are no longer offering decent compensation, or even one of the best training camps around. Most of the best guys would rather keep getting paid well, living at home and seeing family/friends and just make it into the UFC by winning fights in smaller promotions, why put themselves through hell when it won’t make them better fighters, they won’t get paid more and to top it all off they’ll get terrible match ups when they first make it into the UFC (joe silva has been giving TUF winners some awful match ups rather then letting them build up their confidence like with griffin and rashad)
“they aren’t even offering great coaches anymore.”
LOL
Are you kidding?
Just because the fighter is a figurehead doesn’t mean they aren’t offering great coaching. Look at the guys Rashad brought in to coach on TUF 10. Look at the guys GSP & Koscheck are bringing in for TUF 12. Hell, Koscheck is bringing in the entire AKA braintrust while GSP is bringing in a who’s who of trainers in the individual disciplines. Those coaching staffs are going to be incredible.
perhaps I should’ve worded it better, They are great coaches, don’t get me wrong there. But fighters these days have the option of training with coaches like them just by joining one of the major training camps. American top team and Xtreme couture are good examples, they have tons of guys with lots of experience and all the coaching staff in the world. What I mean is that in the past, they were able to offer what was probably the best training camp around where as now, they’re just offering a training camp on the same level as those i’ve already listed.
[…] And Dana White was his usual self. I had to laugh when he said, “You’re not UFC fighters yet” in the same way that Vince McMahon/WWE looks at independent wrestlers who weren’t 100% developed in the WWE mold from the ground-up. “I don’t think there’s any [expletive] secret what we’re looking for here,” which Mr. White said while pitching the concept that they want to find guys who can become ‘world champions.’ Of course, let’s flashback to three months ago when Jordan Breen completely demolished this premise in excellent fashion. […]