Conor McGregor has had quite a year. UFC featherweight champion. International MMA superstar. Nattily dressed Las Vegan.
But it took until September to add his largest crown jewel: person who finally got The Ultimate Fighter back over 600,000 viewers.
The September 10 debut of the venerable reality show’s 22nd season drew 622,000 sets of eyes—not too shabby for cable TV, unless you factor in that it is, really, pretty shabby.
Other shows that notched a higher number that night in the same 10 p.m. Eastern time slot included MTV’s Catfish: The TV Show, something called The Carbonaro Effect and Food Network blockbuster Carnival Cravings. (To be fair, that Carnival Cravings episode could have been the one about the fried Kool-Aid. No one is flipping away from that.)
We can argue about Carnival Cravings till the carnies come home, but it won’t change the fact that TUF’s ratings are not good. The September 10 number—maxed out by McGregor’s introduction as a coach and antagonist working opposite the UFC’s longtime golden boy and short-time drama magnet Urijah Faber—marked the show’s highest-rated debut in two years.
You get it. Even at its best, TUF is in a rut. It’s been that way for quite some time. Stephan Bonnar and Forrest Griffin are not walking through the door.
Potential explanations for the flat line are almost as numerous as the show’s seasons: shopworn formatting at every turn, depleted talent pools from which to draw contestants, diminished stakes for winners and losers, tiresome antics inside “the house” and suboptimal conditions for the fights and fighters.
But enough about the problems. How about some solutions?
That’s where we can help. A team of Bleacher Report MMA writers—Jonathan Snowden, Sydnie Jones, Steven Rondina and yours truly—have a few friendly suggestions. Some are serious. Others, less so. A few are somewhere in between. But that’s not important. What’s important is that we’re right, dammit. Thoroughly and objectively.
So sit back, relax and bask in the rightness. We’re all TUF fans at heart, so here’s to better days ahead. This is the blueprint.
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