Who’s ready for more UFC middleweights and light heavyweights? Because, we’ve got a season chock full of them. Former lightweight champions (and in the case of Penn, welterweight as well) Frankie Edgar and B.J. Penn are facing off as coaches of the 19th season of the Ultimate Fighter. It’s a season set to feature another two division spread in two 8 man tournaments, once fighter pass through the opening, elimination round. The season is set to start Wednesday, April 16th at 10 P.M. on Fox Sports 1.
Spolier Alert: Some months ago, Fox Sports released a trailer for the upcoming season of the Ultimate Fighter. In this trailer, they revealed not only the names of the fighters who made it past the elimination round, but what teams those fighters would be on. It only flashed up for a few seconds in the video, but it was there. The video ran for a couple of weeks, right up until shortly after it and it’s contents were published here on Bloody Elbow. As the video has been pulled I can’t link you directly to that, but if you don’t care about spoilers at all, and want to see who very likely (who knows they could have got it all wrong) made it through to the house, click this link. If not, don’t.
Now to the not-quite-full list of 31 contestants given by the UFC via press release:
- Middleweights
- Josh Clark (7-2), 29 yrs
- Matt Gabel (8-3), 28 yrs
- Lyman Good (15-3), 28 yrs
- Mike King (5-0), 30 yrs
- Dhiego Lima (9-2) 25 yrs
- Adrian Miles (15-5), 30 yrs
- Tyler Minton (6-1), 26 yrs
- Cathal Pendred (13-2), 26 yrs
- Ian Stephens (4-0), 25 yrs
- Adam Stroup (5-1), 27 yrs
- Nordine Taleb (8-2), 32 yrs
- Hector Urbina (16-8-1), 26 yrs
- Bojan Velickovic (8-2) 25 yrs
- Daniel Vizcaya (7-2), 28 yrs
- Tim Williams (8-1), 27 yrs
- Roger Zapata (5-1), 27 yrs
- Light Heavyweights
- Corey Anderson (3-0), 24 yrs
- Kelly Anundson (6-1), 29 yrs
- Anton Berzin (3-1), 24 yrs
- Chris Fields (10-5-1), 30 yrs
- Eddie Gordon (6-1), 29 yrs
- Jake Heun (6-3), 26 yrs
- Tyler King (6-2), 33 yrs
- Todd Monaghan (8-2), 31 yrs
- Cody Mumma (5-1), 30 yrs
- John Poppie (3-1), 24 yrs
- Doug Sparks (7-2), 31 yrs
- Dan Spohn (8-3), 29 yrs
- Joshua Stansbury (4-2), 29 yrs
- Matt Van Buren (6-2), 27
- Patrick Walsh (4-1), 25 Yrs
- TBA
Obviously, the big names here are former Bellator champion Lyman Good, MFC vet Dhiego Lima, and Conor McGregor training partner and former CWFC welterweight champion Cathal Pendred. Along with Tristar gym fighter Nordine Taleb, that makes for a pretty stacked middleweight tournament. On the light heavyweight side Chris Fields is also a training partner of McGregor and Pendred and Eddie Gorden hails from the Serra-Longo gym in New York. Corey Anderson was an NJCAA wrestler at heavyweight, and Van Buren trains out of Alliance MMA.
As a minor note, it should be pointed out that Kelly Anundson already has a fight lined up in Bellator for April 4, so if you’re rooting for him, that’s probably bad news. Stay tuned as we’ll be sure to keep you updated as the season gets underway.
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