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One of the keys to the success of The Ultimate Fighter over the years has been the choice of coaches for the reality show. While there have been some exceptions – Season 4, for instance, didn’t have coaches – most of the time the two coaches selected are a pair of top-ranked fighters, often a UFC champion and a potential challenger, and the season is therefore used to build a fight between them.
Coaches such as Brock Lesnar, Georges St-Pierre and Jon Jones have obviously brought in viewers to the reality show, but given that many of the fighters chosen to coach usually aren’t experienced in teaching lesser fighters, the results we’ve seen have often been mixed.
The likes of Rampage Jackson and Matt Hughes clearly struggled with the job at times, while others like Shane Carwin were largely non-entities, preferring to leave the heavy lifting to their own coaches. A handful of fighters proved to be absolutely phenomenal in the role, though – and should probably consider a move into coaching at some point in the future.
Here the 4 best coaches in TUF history.
#1 Matt Serra (Season 6)
When rivals Matt Serra and Matt Hughes were selected as coaches for the 6th season of TUF in 2007, on the face of it the advantage appeared to be with Hughes, who had previous experience in the role having coached alongside Rich Franklin in Season 2 two years prior. Things didn’t quite turn out that way though, as while Hughes ended up with two of his fighters in the tournament final, it was quite clear that Serra was a superior coach.
Not that Hughes should’ve felt too bad about that – he didn’t do a bad job; it was more that Serra was simply fantastic. The then-UFC Welterweight champion arguably had a weaker team on paper – the likes of John Kolosci, Troy Mandaloniz and Richie Hightower clearly weren’t the most natural athletes – but Serra, alongside a team of coaches which included Ray Longo and Pete Sell, was able to get the absolute best out of them, much to the chagrin of Hughes.
Displaying a calm, laid-back demeanour that had his fighters eating from the palm of his hand, Serra coached his team to the point where they won 6 out of 8 fights against Hughes’s charges – and could’ve won 7 had Jon Koppenhaver been able to finish a rear naked choke attempt on Tommy Speer.
It came as no surprise when Serra actually ended up rising to major fame as a top-level coach alongside Longo shortly after the season had ended – since his stint on TUF he’s trained many top-level UFC fighters, including former Middleweight champion Chris Weidman as well as high-level contenders Aljamain Sterling, Gian Villante and Al Iaquinta.
#2 Tito Ortiz (Season 3 and Season 11)
There have been a number of fighters who ended up coaching on TUF on more than one occasion, but few managed it quite as well as Tito Ortiz. For a man who’d been accused of being little more than a self-promoter on more than one occasion, it came as a shock to many when ‘The Huntington Beach Bad Boy’ did a stellar job on 2006’s Season 3, and then did equally well on Season 11 four years later.
By the time he first coached on the show, Ortiz had almost a decade of MMA experience behind him, and it was quite clear that he was desperate to pass his knowledge onto the younger fighters he was put in charge of. Not only did Tito instil a hard work ethic into his pupils, but he also used some novel methods to help them, such as having Noah Inhofer balance a basketball on his shoulder to ensure he’d keep his hands high during stand-up, and bringing in a sign language interpreter to help the deaf Matt Hamill.
Ortiz clearly out-coached his rival Ken Shamrock during that season, and while his next appearance on TUF – alongside longtime rival Chuck Liddell – proved to be more even in terms of which team came out on top, Tito again proved himself an excellent coach who was willing to go the extra mile – even teaching Clayton McKinney an escape to a triangle choke literally moments after the fighter had been submitted by one.
Unfortunately, Ortiz didn’t finish Season 11 – after withdrawing from his planned fight with Liddell due to a neck injury, he was replaced on the show by Rich Franklin – but as a coach who was clearly prepared to give his all for his team, he definitely warrants a spot on this list.
#3 Jens Pulver (Season 5)
2007’s Season 5 of TUF featured two teams of Lightweights coached by rivals Jens Pulver and BJ Penn, and while Penn came out on top in their eventual fight – choking Pulver out in the first round – it was quite clear to anyone watching the show that ‘Lil Evil’ was the superior coach of the two. As with Hughes and Serra though, it wasn’t that Penn was bad – more that Pulver was brilliant in the role.
Interestingly, Pulver had it hard from the beginning of the season. In an odd move, Penn attempted to game the system while picking teams by asking contestants to raise a hand if they “didn’t want anything to do with Pulver” – and in the confusion, plenty did. Eventually Dana White forced the pair to use a regular picking system – but in a nice twist, Pulver simply didn’t hold anything against any of his fighters who’d wanted to be on Penn’s team.
It was Pulver’s affable nature that made him such a great coach, essentially. Not only did he help fighters like Corey Hill – an inexperienced fighter with no professional bouts – improve greatly, but he knew exactly how to treat his charges too, dealing with an accusation of overtraining from Brandon Melendez in calm fashion and immediately getting the fighter back onside, and knowing when to come down hard on his weakest fighter, Wayne Weems, but also when to praise him.
Pulver even took on an extra fighter – Andy Wang – when Penn booted him off his own team, and immediately took him under his wing. He also refused to hold anything against Nate Diaz when he decided to train with Penn for a session. In the end, the season came down to Diaz against Manny Gamburyan, in a match of two Pulver-coached fighters – hardly surprising given the stellar job he’d done as a coach.
#4 Chael Sonnen (Season 17 and TUF Brazil: Season 3)
For a fighter who prided himself on being a trash-talking “bad guy”, Chael Sonnen was a shockingly brilliant coach; in fact, I’d say there’s an argument to be made for him being the best coach in the history of the reality show. Nobody was really sure what to expect when he was chosen to coach against Jon Jones for Season 17 in 2013, but most fans were pleasantly surprised when ‘The American Gangster’ was clearly there for the benefit of the contestants rather than just to build his fight with Jones.
Sonnen made inspirational speeches that really worked – driving the likes of Kelvin Gastelum and Luke Barnatt onto surprising successes against far more experienced opponents; he brought in guest coaches like Ronda Rousey and Mickey Rourke to push his fighters even harder, and he knew exactly how to handle the tricky personality that was Uriah Hall.
Sonnen’s performance in Season 17 alone would net him a spot on this list, but a year later he pulled off something even more amazing. For years he’d talked trash about Brazil and Brazilian fighters, and yet when he was made a coach on the 3rd season of TUF: Brazil alongside his bitter rival Wanderlei Silva, he not only did a great job again, but he also managed to win round practically every fighter in the house.
For showing total faith in all of his fighters no matter the odds against them, for continually inspiring them to perform way above their usual ability – the likes of Guilherme Vasconcelos and Marcos Rogerio de Lima even ended up training with Chael after their TUF stints due to his brilliance as a coach – there’s no doubt that ‘The Bad Guy’ is one of TUF’s all-time great coaches.
