10 of the most unforgettable moments in the history of The Ultimate Fighter

#2: Let me bang, bro! (Season 16)

By 2012 and Season 16, a lot of MMA fans had given up on TUF and the casual fans who’d been drawn in by the rivalries like Ortiz/Shamrock and Penn/Pulver in the earlier seasons had almost certainly departed. So to see a fighter from the 16th season suddenly become a genuine YouTube meme was truly outrageous.

The fighter’s name? Julian ‘Nitrane’ Lane. Sporting a red Mohawk hairdo, Lane stood out right away as a character to watch. Within days of being in the TUF house, he was shown sniping at fellow castmate Matt Secor for seemingly no reason. This was incredibly just a precursor for what was about to come.

Lane went on to lose to Bristol Marunde in the 4th episode of the season, but it wasn't until Episode 8 that his outrageous moment came. The episode saw a number of the contestants hit the bottle, and suddenly, a drunk Lane completely snapped.

‘Nitrane’ decided to challenge teammate Dominic Waters to a fight and from there he seemingly lost his mind, stalking around the house looking for Waters while the rest of the cast attempted to stop him. The incident finally came to a head when Lane broke into the bedroom where Waters was – and rather than attack him, he simply screamed at another teammate, Michael Hill, to “let me bang, bro!” before bursting into tears.

Eventually, the other fighters calmed Lane down, but by that point, the scene had become a meme on YouTube – usually set to the sounds of Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey. Quite what possessed Lane to act in such a manner is anyone’s guess; years later he couldn't explain it himself, but with that one simple – but outrageous – scene he wrote himself into TUF history and created an everlasting meme, too.