Win or lose tomorrow night against Chris Leben at UFC 89: “Bisping vs. Leben,” Michael Bisping will be asked to serve as a coach on the next and ninth season of The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) mixed martial arts reality series that airs on Spike TV.
UFC President Dana White today confirmed the long-rumored appointment at the UFC Fight Club question and answer session at The National Indoor Arena (NIA) in Birmingham, England, according to Fighters Only Magazine.
White is in town, obviously, hosting the 11-fight card that is scheduled for Saturday, October 18 that features a main event between “The Count” and “The Crippler.”
Bisping — TUF 3 winner and current British UFC posterboy — is a clear choice for the position, considering TUF 9 will be themed, “U.S. vs. U.K.” White did not confirm the opposing coach, however, he did indicate that Rich Franklin and Dan Henderson are both under consideration.
Perhaps that decision will be made a little easier when “Ace” and “Hollywood” clash in the main event at UFC 93: “Dublin” on January 17.
Time will tell.
TUF 9 will feature a mix of middleweight and welterweight hopefuls who will compete for “six figure” UFC contracts in a tournament-style format. Tryouts are already scheduled for Chicago and London this month to select a 32-member cast, which will eventually be whittled down to 16 in the first few days of taping.
The production schedule has not been revealed at this time; however, if the promotion decides to wait for either Franklin and Henderson then it could be pushed back until January 2009.
Stay tuned to MMAmania.com for more on this developing story.
46 Comments »
man, he should have to win(which I think he will) before confirming this!
i wonder how its going to work if rich franklin beats henderson? is franklin going to drop back down to fight bisping at 185 as opposing coach?
either guy can drop down
Well in any case, we all knew this was comin’ along…
Sounds like this was almost a pre-mature announcement? Very Odd
Yeah… I dont see how this is good for Franklin. He doesn’t plan to go back down to 185, and that would only make it harder for him to get his body adjusted to 205.
And Bisping is definately not going back to 205.
well, if Anderson retires like he says he will in mid 09, and you add in the TUF treatment for bisping and rich, then at the end of the season (december 09) they could fight for the vacant title. of course, thats all IF the Spider retires, or vacates the belt to do the big money 205lb matches.
Good point. hell, if the show is taped in Feb/March.. they could show it during the summer, and have the title fight by September.
nope bad all around bad , except if you live in England
thats what i think on both counts. bisping should have to win 1rst(im pretty sure he will, but who knows?). and the winner of franklin/hendo would be the other coach. ive read were hendo has denied being a coach next season.
Im pretty sure it will be Henderson who gets picked as I think he will win the fight coming up with Franklin.
Dan has stated he wants a rematch with Anderson and would like to stay at 185. I just think Dana thought, everyone wants to see Dan vs Franklin and if he wins that he’ll probably give Dan a chance at the rematch.
I’d hate to say it being English but I’d be rooting for Henderson on that one as I always do and I believe he has the better chance at beating Anderson.
True that. Hendo is the only one that came close to frustrating the Spider, which I think is his weakness. He was the only fighter who went toe-to-toe with Anderson. Lutter wasn’t even close. Though his mount on Anderson seemed like the beginning of the end for Anderson.
I wanna see Hendo as a coach. I think he’ll be like BJ Penn.
Me too. He shows such respect for the sport and embodies what a fighter should be. Awesome coach for definate.
Well, bet ALL your money on BISPING.
100% HE IS WINNING NOW!
This is REALLY close to fixing a fight with an announcement like this.
Not really. We already knew the season would be UK vs US. Who else is there in ufc that could represent UK? That is well known like Bisping.
wake up!! fights arent fixed in the ufc.
there is no fix in, who was gonna coach james thompson??
i think it should be usa vs. the world rather than uk…are there really 16 guys in the uk worthy of the chance?
No but like most season they’ll need some cannon fodder so it dosn’t matter much or some guys who don’t have much skill but are a bit crazy, bump the tv ratings.
well, they do put out some decent talent. theres bisping, paul taylor/kelly/daley, dan hardy, terry etim.. like i said, some decent, solid talent.
yeah, and none of them will be on the show except as coaches
theres alot of pauls in england
Yeah but I personally find it hard to name 16 decent fighters from one weight class from the UK as a lot of people probably do.
Also there’s not many well rounded fighters in the UK, and most people really lack wrestling skills, which is the bread & butter of most US fighters. I’m from UK and I’m not a giat 300lb monster, I fight at 145lbs and I’ve sparred with 100’s of people and have yet to come across someone with any decent wrestling skills or someone I can’t easily take down. It’s crazy. Most people I’ve sparred with are obviously bigger than me in weight and height and I take them down at will and they have a lot of problems doing the same to me.
Now I don’t know if that’s because I’m a naturally gifted wrester or if everybody’s wrestling here sucks (probably the latter, or maybe a mixture of both lol.) But the UK really lacks wrestling skill.
But as you rightly pointed out all those are already fighting in the UFC.
There are a lot of upcoming fighters here in the UK and in time could be fighting in the UFC and being on the ultimate fighter is the ultimate test so to speak. As every season has proven so far some will step up and some will fall at the first hurdle. I know first hand there are a lot of talented determined fighters and what better prospect than fighting in the UFC. That is surely everyones ultimate goal.
Either way I see it as mainly a marketing excercise for Dana white as it is potentially a big market here considering we are a very small island and he knows that growing the sport here is a lucrative prospect for him to expand into other countries as they have stated they want to do.
I gotta say I love it cos I get to see more events staged here as do a lot of other UK fans.
I dunno depends if those events are any good. I went to UFC 70 and it wasn’t that great of an experience, gotta to mett & speak with Dana though which was cool. Haven’t felt the urge to go to another event though, and lets face it the cards are usually lacking somewhat when they come to UK.
id rather see him keep fighting then coaching.
ufc needs get whole mma camps to coach .. ex.. miltech vs a.t.t
its win , win . Camps get exposure and can grow with new fighters and top ufc fighters arent wasting time on a reality show when they should be fighting. kinda like when matt serra did the show and we had to wait forever to see him try to defend his title. Mir vs Nog coulda happened monthes ago.
That would be cool. You could have 4 camps and each brings 4 guys or something to that effect. I would love to see that. I don’t think there is enough of a rivalry between camps though, I wish there was more.
did you cut and paste this? I had this Idea 6 months ago. guys said who would coach at these camps while these guys were on the show, like they are the only guys at the camp. By the way, militich is the bottom feeder now, funny how one guy can go from best to worst!
Caesar gracia
greg jackson
bob cook
all would be good for the show!
they dont use real coaches, they use fighters.
Team Nogueira MMA Academy would kick ass, but he is on there now. But that place has some of the top guys in sport. I am a bit bias but I would like to see Team Serra/Longo on a show like that, great coaches there. AKA, as much as I don’t like them, would be good for the show too. Got to have cocky california guys on there. Endless possibilities for a show like that though.
I am not sure this idea would work. All the camps have guys they train and if they moved to Vegas all their fighters would have to move to vegas. How would they train the TUF guys and their regular guys at the same time? Trying to fight prep one of your regular guys while babysitting some TUF guys isnt the best for your regulars.
Shawn Tompkins aswell.
i like that idea.. Xtreme Couture would win it all. well, it’d be between them and Jackson’s Submission Fighting. IMO the top MMA camps in the sport. But you throw in AKA, MFS, ATT, Wolfslair, Chutebox (if any left), NOGs gym, bas rutten, i could go on and on.
Excellent idea! That would be highly competitive!
Even though I am one of the biggest Rich Franklin supporters, do we really need to see Rich Franklin as a coach again on TUF? I wont lie he was not the most marketable coach, he was pretty plain and boring, and plus we really dont want to see him asking his fighters to start off a drop to a knee now do we?
lol, plus for all of you Jorge Gurgel haters, you know for a 100% fact that if Rich is on the show coaching and he can bring his staff it would be JG, Rob Raford and Neil Rowe. So that means more JG for UFC!
I think TUF 9 will be extremely weak, because they are debuting all of these high UK fighters with the next upcoming shows.
Ugh..
If Bispins wins, the other coach is gonna be the winner of Rich/Hendo (duh). But here’s where it gets interesting. If Bisping loses, I think the LOSER of the Rich/Hendo fight will be the coach. It’s gonna make more sense if both coaches are coming off a loss and then fight each other in the end.
This is a good way to introduce fighters from other countries and increase the popularity of the UFC there. It would be sweet to see Brazil, Japan and other countries featured in a show like this.
sounds good except it is shown in america and many people probably would rather have people who can speek english. i would hate having to read a bunch of subtitles
IT COULD BE MARQUARDT! people are forget this.
I think if Hendo wins his fight he’s probably gonna be the other coach. If Bisping win his then the fight between Bisping and Hendo will be for the number one contender spot (I don’t think Anderson Silva will retire next year, because he has a six fights contract and he’s planning to honour it, so it’s almost impossible to do it on less than a year). If Franklin wins, then I don’t WTF is gonns happen because I don’t think he will be fighting at MW anytime soon.
On the other hand, maybe Anderson Silva can improve his english and be the other coach. Nog doesn’t speak english very well either and we are understanding him just fine
this is fucking ridiculous. bisbing is such a douchebag, whos resume isnt very impressive. he’s been babied and pampered in the ufc because they want to move to the uk. i cant watch a full season with this asshole on every episode. awesome
They should do a TUF bringing fighters from Brazil.. Then we’d see some sick mofos
Good luck Bisping! Not with winning, but, with recovering from your highlight reel knockout around two minutes of the first round! Unless, that is, you pull a Kalib Starnes!?!
I live in the UK and I can’t see a good fighter coming out of this contest. The crase of mma has just started in the UK but Dana needs to milk some quids . Is Dana Irish?Or ?
Michael Bisping sucks at kick boxing and is not well rounded at all. If Dana wasn’t such a bald headed money hungry piece of garbage he would have awarded Bispings win over Matt Hamill to Matt Hamill. The actual winner. Chris Lebon practically ran Bisping into the octagon fences for three rounds and Bisping was awarded another fight just because it was in England. Bisping is a clown and I hope he does get a chance to go against the best at 185 and I hope he drops in the Middle-weight division fast.
Cock sucker.