Set to wrap up Friday night with the crowning of the inaugural women’s strawweight champion, this current season of The Ultimate Fighter has been the best in recent memory and it’s not even close.
Unlike recent seasons, this wasn’t a season cast with low-level prospects and a couple of regional names finally getting a crack at breaking into the big leagues. This time around, the 16 women brought into the competition were among the very best the 115-pound weight division had to offer – a collection of the top names competing under the Invicta FC banner and a handful of emerging talents from various other organizations.
While the time inside the house played out in predictable fashion just as it does every season – cliques were formed, contestants bickered, drama ensued – the action in the Octagon was a mix of dominant performances, surprising upsets and close contests fought at the highest level since the featherweights and bantamweights debuted on the program in Season 14.
This season has been a fusion of March Madness and Big Brother and should have been a runaway success, but unfortunately, the build to Friday’s championship finale hasn’t really captured the audience’s attention. Why is that?
There are a few different reasons (I think) and the most obvious one is that after 19 previous domestic seasons and a handful of international editions, fans are just over The Ultimate Fighter in its current state.
As much as the quality of the contestants was significantly higher this season than in recent years and a seeding system was introduced, at its core, it’s still a reality TV competition that played out the same way it has since Chris Leben peed on Jason Thacker’s bed on Season One, Episode One nearly a decade ago.
Teams were picked, groups were formed, and contestants fought, both inside and outside of the cage.
What made The Ultimate Fighter special in those early years was the “newness” of it all – we hadn’t been given a chance to peek behind the curtain and see what fighters go through as they prepare for a fight or allowed access into their personal lives. Plus, reality TV was still relatively new and intriguing. That newness has worn off, fans see behind the curtain on a regular basis and reality TV stopped being intriguing sometime between Joe Millionaire and Tila Tequila.
Secondly, with the high volume of live events taking place – both UFC and non-UFC alike – there isn’t as great a need to invest in three months and change of taped exhibition bouts. Again, this goes back to the changing MMA landscape over the last 10 years.
When TUF kicked off, the UFC wasn’t holding events every weekend and fans didn’t have access to as many secondary and tertiary MMA options as they do now, so there was still a hunger for MMA content of any kind.
There were 10 UFC events in total in 2005, the year The Ultimate Fighter debuted. This year, there have already been 42 UFC events, including 10 in the last 12 weeks, with three more remaining on the schedule. Add in Bellator MMA, World Series of Fighting and the various promotions that land on The Fight Network or AXS TV and it’s possible that fight fans can watch a live event or two every single weekend.
That makes tuning in to TUF every Wednesday for 13 weeks a little less compelling.
Next, the fact that this season featured the first all-female cast can’t be overlooked. While some people were stoked to see a collection of the top female fighters slug it out in pursuit of UFC gold, there is still a segment of the fight-loving population that has little-to-no interest in seeing women compete inside the cage.
It’s a personal preference thing and while it might not make sense to you or me, if a portion of the audience that watched Team Edgar take on Team Penn between April and July aren’t particularly fond of female fights, that would contribute to the decline in viewership this season experienced.
Lastly, the fact that this season was contested at 115 pounds probably played a part in things too.
Some fans are still reticent to embrace the featherweights and bantamweights, who have been plying their trade in the UFC for four years now and have delivered some of the best fights and finishes in the organization over that stretch. The struggle for acceptance is even more difficult for the flyweights, despite the fact that Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson is one of the five best fighters on the planet today, so to then go another 10 pounds south is automatically challenging.
Mix in the standard “lighter weight fighters don’t finish” argument – even though exactly half of the fights this season have resulted in stoppages – and you have yet another reason why some fans might have opted not to tune in and embrace this season.
Whatever the reasons, TUF 20 hasn’t been nearly as successful and impactful as it could have been – and probably should have been – which has prompted the UFC to suggest that the show will undergo a major overhaul for 2015.
What will that entail? That’s a subject for another column on another day.