UFC's 'Ultimate Fighter' reality series is back ... and exactly the same as ever (2024)

For the first time since 2018, “The Ultimate Fighter” is back in our lives. And if you missed it while it was gone, I have good news for you. Judging by the first episode that appeared on ESPN+ this week, it is very, very much the same show that you remember. As in, maybe even the exact same show. Which may or may not be exactly what you want out of it.

If you’re just joining us, having somehow missed the years 2005-2018 in the world of UFC-themed reality TV programming, the premise here still ought to be pretty familiar. A crew of 16 fighters, spread across two different weight classes (bantamweight and middleweight, for this season) are separated into two competing teams coached by established UFC fighters (here it’s featherweight champ Alexander Volkanovski and Brian Ortega), who will then fight each other after the entire season has aired. Fighters are eliminated with a loss. Finalists face off in a live finale to determine a winner. Rinse and repeat twice a year for a conveyor belt of steady incoming talent.

There was a time when this series meant everything to the UFC. It was a life raft in stormy seas, a Trojan horse to get MMA on TV. It remained a core part of the UFC’s TV schedule for years. But viewership wound steadily down and fan interest waned as it became clear that, once you had seen one season of this show, you’d pretty much seen them all. Coaches might argue and shove, maybe break a door or two. Fighters would inevitably get drunk on free alcohol in the rented mansion between training sessions. Antics would ensue, but mostly the same ones over and over.

But as MMA programming became vastly more common and easily accessible at all times, via multiple sources, suddenly sitting through an hour of reality TV to get to one pre-recorded exhibition fight at the end didn’t seem as great a bargain. And so, after the 28th season (not counting various international editions), the show was shelved.

That it’s been resurrected for ESPN+ now mostly tells us what we already know – content is king. Streaming services need new stuff, and the UFC could churn these shows out in its sleep.

In this early look from tonight’s #ReturnOfTUF episode, coaches @alexvolkanovski and @BrianTcity feel out which fighters want to be on their respective teams 👀

Stream the season premiere starting at 9 PM ET on @ESPNPlus pic.twitter.com/OercZ45HrK

— ESPN MMA (@espnmma) June 2, 2021

But then, you see the title of this first episode back – “New Beginnings” – and you start to wonder. Did the time away give rise to any new ideas? Might we try a new way of doing these old tricks? Could TUF become appointment viewing once again?

If you’re hoping for something fresh or different here, it seems you’re out of luck. One episode in, the new season looks and feels exactly like the old seasons. Same rhythm of training footage, character development, and climactic fight. Same scenes of fighters marveling at the plush new surroundings that they’ll eventually come to feel imprisoned by. Same deep, shirtless conversations by the pool, followed by the same generic hype-up music to let us know when it’s fight time.

As usual, we learn a little about the coaches simply by observing how they approach this different sort of task before them. Instead of being asked to beat people up inside a cage, they have to become teachers and leaders (or at least look like it while handing off the reins to their own existing coaches). When Ortega explains that he thinks of coaching like feeding someone a pizza (cut it into slices for them, man, duh), you actually do get a sense of the man behind the fighter.

You also get some predictability, like when the Division I wrestler gets matched up with the Alaska Fighting Championships product who says he learned most of his technique from YouTube. Not hard to see how that will go. Also not hard to guess how long it will take just by looking at how much time is left in the episode.

Of course, you also get plenty of self-mythologizing hyperbole, such as when, not three minutes into the episode, we hear the disembodied voice of UFC President Dana White confidently declaring that “there never has been and there never will be a show that’s more important than ‘The Ultimate Fighter.’” (Seriously? You’re telling me everything from “I Love Lucy” to “The Simpsons” is somewhere beneath TUF on the all-time important shows list? Because at some point you’re going to force me to wonder how we’re measuring importance.)

As a whole, the new TUF seems … fine. Yes, it’s the same as it ever was, a paint-by-numbers approach to reality TV that has not changed with the times even a little. But it’s also a formula that works, to some extent, and eventually delivers what the UFC wants it to. Each season can be counted on to produce at least one or two fighters who will matter. Occasionally it even gives us a future contender or even champ. It also locks them into long-term contracts while they’re still mostly unknown and working pretty cheap, so that’s also an upside for the UFC.

Still, it’s hard not to feel like the TUF restart represents a missed opportunity to do or at least attempt something different. One thing the UFC isn’t suffering from at the moment is a lack of interchangeable and mostly anonymous fighters filling out the roster. Also, at least as a consumer, it feels like there’s already plenty of content, what with the many UFC Fight Night events and the pay-per-views and the Dana White’s Contender Series events (which, it must be said, are basically the same thing as TUF only with more fighting and less talking).

If we had to go back to the reality TV well, couldn’t we have tried dipping in there with a different kind of bucket? Even if it failed, at least it might have been interesting.

But then, maybe that’s just me talking as a longtime viewer, someone who has sat through all this before. It’s possible the UFC is hoping this will hook a brand new audience, the ESPN+ crowd out there clicking around for something new. It worked as a Trojan horse once already, so why mess with the formula? Instead, just keep churning out batch after batch, hoping the sameness of it all proves to be comforting rather than boring.

(Top photo: Courtesy of ESPN)