The UFC released a promo for the next American season of the Ultimate Fighter: Team Edgar vs. Team Penn last week, and in the promo was a brief shot of the complete cast list for the show. It wasn’t exactly upfront, I had to watch the video a couple times to see it, but it pops up at about 20 seconds in:
It’s an official Fox Sports production and it’s not something they’re pulling, so it’s likely an intentional teaser, which is a little odd considering it essentially means that many viewers will know all the results of the initial entrance bouts for the first episode. However, the importance of those bouts does seem like something they’ve been stepping away from, especially in recent international seasons, so it could be a trend toward a more long term production shift… or maybe not. Anyway, that’s not why you’re here, you want to get a look at who is on the next season of the Ultimate Fighter:
- TEAM EDGAR
- Corey Anderson (3-0)
- Patrick Walsh (4-1)
- Matt Van Buren (6-2)
- Todd Monaghan (8-2)
- Ian Stephens (2-0)
- Dhiego Lima (9-1)
- Eddie Gordon (6-1)
- Hector Urbina (16-8-1)
- TEAM PENN
- Anton Berzin (3-1)
- Josh Clark (7-2)
- Daniel Spohn (8-3)
- Chris Fields (10-5-1)
- Mike King (5-0)
- Tim Williams (8-1)
- Cathal Pendred (13-2-1)
- Roger Zapata (4-1)
Records aside, there are a few points of interest here: Obviously the big favorites going in are the 26 year old Cathal Pendred and the 24 year old Dhiego Lima. Both men fight out of decent camps and both have shown the talent to be considered top prospects. Outside of them Anderson was an NJCAA wrestler at heavyweight, Van Buren is an Alliance MMA product (Domick Cruz’s camp among many others), Monaghan comes from Ben Rothwell’s gym up in Wisconsin, Gordon is a Serra-Longo fighter, Urbina fights out of American Top Team, Spohn had a run in Bellator’s light heavyweight division where he lost a split decision to Attila Vegh, and Fields is a training partner of Pendred and McGregor at SBG Ireland. There are a lot of young fighters coming out of a lot of big, well regarded gyms, so it should be interesting to see who can rep their big camp name or if any of the small gym guys are going to breakout.
Edgar revealed his TUF coaches just a couple weeks ago and tipped his hat that this season, while finished taping should air sometime in April. Stay tuned to Bloody Elbow as we’ll be sure to keep you posted with any and all updates on the Ultimate Fighter seasons as well as all the fight announcements, breakdowns, and card changes for the upcoming run of UFC cards.
UPDATE: As the video has since been pulled, Fansided.com was nice enough to let me use their screen grab of the team rosters:
via cdn.fansided.com
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