5 Ultimate Fighter champions you probably forgot about

TUF 18 winner Chris Holdsworth has been absent since May 2014
TUF 18 winner Chris Holdsworth has been absent since May 2014

#5 Eddie Gordon (Season 19)

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Eddie Gordon lost three fights in a row after winning TUF 19
Eddie Gordon lost three fights in a row after winning TUF 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Edited by Vikshith R
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