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With its 28th season in the US alone about to end this weekend, The Ultimate Fighter is one of the longest-running reality TV shows in history. However, like other reality shows – the UK’s X Factor comes directly to mind, for instance – the winner of each season doesn’t always necessarily go on to the most success inside the UFC proper.
Sure, season winners like Forrest Griffin, Rashad Evans, Tony Ferguson and Nate Diaz ended up doing tremendously for themselves, but with 28 seasons – some of which featured more than one winner – there’s bound to be a few victors who ended up slipping through the cracks.
Here are 5 former TUF winners that most fans have probably forgotten about.
#1 James Wilks (Season 9)
2009’s Season 9 was largely about pushing the UFC into the UK market, as the season was marketed as a UK vs. USA competition, with Michael Bisping representing the Brits as a coach and Dan Henderson heading up the American team. The UK side eventually came out on top in both the 155lbs and 170lbs tournaments, but strangely enough, it was a Brit based in the US who ended up winning the Welterweight bracket.
Grappling expert James Wilks – who’d moved to the US in 2000 - surprised everyone by submitting early favourite Che Mills in his qualifying fight to make it into the TUF house. He then defeated Frank Lester on two occasions – the second when Lester subbed in for the injured Jason Pierce – to make it to the final round.
The final saw Wilks tap out Damarques Johnson with a first-round rear naked choke, but unfortunately for ‘Lightning’ that was about as good as it got in the UFC for him. The win was followed up by a loss to Matt Brown in a great fight, and Wilks then defeated Peter Sobotta before losing to Claude Patrick in 2010.
Sadly though, despite being booked in multiple fights in 2011, Wilks was forced out with injuries – most notably a case of spinal stenosis – and ended up retiring in 2012 after being told he risked paralysis if he continued to fight.
Wilks ended his career with a solid 10-4 record, but due to his last UFC fight coming just a year after he won his TUF season, he’s largely been forgotten by fans since.
#2 Jonathan Brookins (Season 12)
2010’s Season 12 of TUF saw Georges St-Pierre and Josh Koscheck leading two teams of Lightweights into a 16-man tournament, but surprisingly it was a natural 145lber who ended up coming out on top. Jonathan Brookins was already experienced prior to joining the TUF cast – he’d fought Jose Aldo in the WEC in 2008 – and the soft-spoken, long-haired fighter quickly proved himself highly skilled on the reality show.
Brookins comfortably defeated Ran Weathers to make it into the house, then as part of Team GSP, he dispatched highly-favoured Armenian fighters Sevak Magakian and Sako Chivitchyan by rear naked choke before defeating grappling expert Kyle Watson in the semi-finals.
Michael Johnson was his opponent in the final, and although the fight proved to be much tougher for Brookins than his previous ones, he was still able to come away with a unanimous decision win after using his wrestling skill to ground ‘The Menace’ in the second and third rounds.
With the UFC introducing the 145lbs weight class literally weeks after the season ended, Brookins was expected to find success in his more natural home of Featherweight. But injuries sidelined him for most of 2011 and when he returned in September, he lost a close fight to Erik Koch.
2012 saw him pick up a win over the overmatched Vagner Rocha, but a pair of losses via submission to top prospects Charles Oliveira and Dustin Poirier followed, and surprisingly, Brookins then decided to hang up his gloves to practice yoga full-time.
Brookins returned to MMA in 2014 but has only been able to put together a record of 3-4 since and has not returned to the UFC – making him an easy TUF winner to forget about despite his skills.
#3 Colton Smith (Season 16)
Season 16 of TUF wasn’t too well-received even when it first aired back in 2012, so it’s hardly surprising that fans have largely forgotten the eventual winner, Colton Smith. Smith actually had a fascinating background, interestingly enough; a Sergeant First Class in the US Army, Smith completed two tours of Iraq during his time in the military.
Unfortunately though, inside the Octagon he didn’t quite share the exciting fighting style used by fellow military and UFC veterans Brian Stann and Tim Kennedy. A wrestler by trade, Smith used his powerful takedowns to ground his opponents, and largely looked to grind them out from there.
The tactic served him well during his time on TUF, as he defeated Jesse Barrett, Eddy Ellis, Igor Araujo and Jon Manley to advance to the final – although he was unable to finish any of his fights before the final buzzer. The final went largely the same way, as he outgrappled Canadian prospect Mike Ricci to take a unanimous decision.
Smith’s post-TUF career didn’t go so well, though. Faced with fighters who were far more well-rounded than he was – Robert Whittaker, Michael Chiesa and Diego Ferreira – Smith lost three fights in a row, one by knockout and two by submission.
Those losses signalled the end of his time in the UFC and although he’s gone 4-1 since, he has yet to return to the world’s biggest promotion. Due to his short tenure with the UFC and his victory in one of the lowest-rated TUF seasons, Smith has largely become forgotten in the years since.
#4 Chris Holdsworth (Season 18)
The winner of the men’s Bantamweight section of Season 18 of TUF, Chris Holdsworth – a product of the famed Team Alpha Male – seemed to have the world at his feet after his victory in the reality show. An affable, confident fighter, Holdsworth reeled off 3 submission wins inside the house to qualify for the finals, and then tapped out Brit Davey Grant to win the season at the Finale.
A victory over Chico Camus at UFC 173 in May 2014 moved him to 6-0 in his professional MMA career, but disaster then struck as he was diagnosed with Post-Concussion Syndrome shortly afterwards. The concussion that caused his condition came during his training camp for the Camus fight, and he hasn’t been able to fight since.
Controversially, Holdsworth and Team Alpha Male have since claimed that the fighter’s injury was caused by their former teammate TJ Dillashaw – who apparently struck Holdsworth with what would be considered an illegal knee to the head during a training session.
Regardless of the cause of injury, whether Holdsworth can return to action is a big question mark given it’s now been over four years since his last fight. He’s definitely the most unfortunate of all of the forgotten TUF winners as he looked like a surefire future star coming out of the reality show but his injury has prevented him from getting close to his potential.
#5 Eddie Gordon (Season 19)
Season 19 of TUF, which aired in mid-2014, was one of the least highly rated seasons to date, largely because of a dearth of controversial incidents during the reality show taping. Despite this, the winner of the 205lbs bracket during that season – Corey Anderson – has gone onto strong success in the UFC and is currently ranked in the top ten at Light-Heavyweight.
The same cannot be said for the winner of the Middleweight bracket, Eddie ‘Truck’ Gordon. Gordon impressed during the tapings by grinding out tough wins over Matt Gabel, Mike King and Cathal Pendred, and then surprised everyone by displaying some serious knockout power by stopping Dhiego Lima in the final in just over a minute.
That was as good as it got, though. Gordon followed his TUF victory with a really nasty loss to Josh Samman via head kick and then lost back-to-back fights to Chris Dempsey and Antonio Carlos Junior before being released in mid-2015.
Perhaps the biggest cause of Gordon becoming a forgotten TUF champion is what happened next, though; after a win on the independent scene he returned to the TUF house for 2017’s Redemption season but was promptly choked out by Season 22’s Tom Gallicchio.
Quite what went wrong for Gordon is hard to tell – the likeliest scenario is that he over-performed on TUF somewhat and simply wasn’t experienced enough to succeed in the UFC proper – but it seems unlikely that we’ll see him return any time soon, as he’s currently on a 3-fight skid in the Professional Fighters League.
