How will the UFC rebound from its lowest rated The Ultimate Fighter season in history? With two heavyweight head coaches that will surely polarize MMA fans. Heavyweight sluggers Shane Carwin and Roy Nelson will coach TUF 16.
Two of the hardest hitting fighters in MMA will serve as TUF coaches on the second season of the show to air on FX. Nelson is coming off a win while Carwin is coming off of a loss and a long vacation. Carwin and Nelson don’t have the bitter rivalry of last season’s coaches but as fierce competitors you never know what can happen.
[adinserter block=”2″]Carwin and Nelson do nothing for me as TUF coaches.. Shane Carwin is about the most serious fighter I have ever seen interviewed. I take nothing away from him as a fighter, but I haven’t seen much of a personality over the last few years. Roy Nelson is a guy that comes off a bit more obnoxious than funny to me. The idea of seeing the fat guy fight is funny once, but after that I can’t think of many interviews I have seen with Roy where he has blown me away with wit and humor. Not too mention, Nelson is 4-3 in UFC competition. Should this guy really be a TUF head coach?
The one upside here is that there aren’t any star fighters or headliners held up due to TUF. When you have champions like Dominick Cruz and Georges St-Pierre as coaches with fight commitments, you tie up entire divisions for months if not a year. Taking Carwin or Nelson out of the mix for the next several months won’t anyone or anything in the UFC heavyweight division.
Carwin and Nelson are fascinating choices to me because the UFC is theoretically under enormous pressure. Coming off of a season of the lowest ratings in TUF history, you would expect them to come back with more dynamic coaches. I could be reading more into this than I should be, but maybe this is a message to Fox/FX? Certainly the UFC cannot be happy that none of the Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen UFC 148 Prime Time or Countdown specials were given airtime on Fox.
On the other hand, there are some notable differences in this season’s TUF show. For one, the show will not air live anymore. Two, there are no tryouts to get on the show. Dana White and producers hand-picked competitors as opposed to previous years where they held open tryouts. There are still rumors that this would be a comeback season, but that is not confirmed. My hunch is that since there were no tryouts, that the rumor would only be stronger.
This season will feature an entire welterweight class. The idea of Carwin and Nelson teaching welterweights is just bizarre to me. Carwin is a decorated amateur wrestler and Nelson has a much better ground game than he gets credit for. However, I just don’t know how well their game plans will translate to welterweight hopefuls.
I am not sure if they will ever find another Forrest Griffin or Rashad Evans on The Ultimate Fighter. To me, the concept is long past being interesting or productive. It was easy to find talented unsigned fighters several years ago as opposed to now. I did enjoy last season but quite frankly that was mostly due to watching Dominick Cruz teach and train. I can’t imagine that I would find watching Nelson or Carwin coach to be anywhere close to as fascinating as Cruz.
[adinserter block=”1″]”This is going to be a very interesting dynamic between these two heavyweights,” UFC president Dana White said. “They both have huge punching power and great chins, but outside of the octagon, they couldn’t be any more different.”
That’s fine, but it’s time to create a show that’s different.
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Bonner griffin would have been cool. I was trained by a light weight and I fought at 280. That worked pretty good cuz I was trained for speed and cardio and already had the power. So that translated well. But I still had trouble keeping the pace of the little guys. I don't see the coaches being able to train the guys properly
What coaches were you hoping to see eric? No mater who the coaches were this time, i know i wont be watching, its gonna take a complete format overhaul to get me interested in this show again
Great question. I would have been more interested in the proposed Bonnar-Griffin season. But you are right, the show needs a complete overhaul.