Episode 444: Watered Down Championship

I think The Ultimate Fighter concept, um, actually is r- in, in many respects is singularly the most important thing that's happened for the benefit of MMA in our, in our television lifetimes.

No doubt.

That show tr- the UFC was burning cash.

It was a bonfire, and there weren't a lot of things on the horizon to suggest that it wouldn't continue to just burn cash.

Until a guy by the name of Craig Piligian, very prolific, uh, unscripted reality show competition elimination form- you know, anything involving testosterone and danger.

That's Craig Piligian's kind of wheelhouse, and he got in there and worked with UFC, and it was really Craig Piligian, his genius, that came up with the format.

That's why I talk so much about formats.

Things and recipes and formulas that are balanced in such a way that they make your presentation feel very unique because it is, right? And Piligian delivered a hell of a format.

It got people interested in a sport that was otherwise kind of obscure, or if people did know about it, generally, depending on where you were in the country, you looked down upon it.

It, it, it was, yeah, it was like human cockfighting.

It is, eh.

That was the general perception outside of the, of course, the fan base who knew better.

That show changed all that, and you can go back and look at the revenue model of, of UFC and the trajectory and when and how things turned around, and I think it'd be hard to argue that that show wasn't the reason for it.

I- random sentence here.

Can you believe Stefan Bonner passed away? You know, Stefan Bonner and Forrest Griffin, the main event of that show, was one of the greatest fi- I mean, you wanna talk about the right place, the right time.

The UFC needed a hit.

Of course, you had Ken Shamrock on that show, and you had Rich Franklin on that show.

So there was some other star power, but paying off this competition show and the result of this competition show being perhaps the most exciting MMA fight in television history at that point, and I, maybe even to this day.

But it's really crazy to think that Stefan Bonner now has been gone four years.

He passed away at just 45 years old.

I don't know.

It feels like he and Forrest Griffin, man, they really helped put that company on the map with their performance that night, and I don't know.

It still just is a head-scratcher to me.

Maybe I, I hate to say it this way, but we're more familiar a- a- and we've at least heard the story of a professional wrestler passing away young, but Stefan Bonner at 45 is still like, damn, that's way too young.

young.Yeah, that's young.