Since its creation, The Ultimate Fighter series has been an important part of the UFC hype machine—and now it just got much bigger with the announcement that the sport’s biggest draw, Brock Lesnar, would be coaching against Junior Dos Santos in Season 13.
Lesnar has been the UFC’s biggest cash cow since his first fight in The Octagon in February of 2008 at UFC 81. No matter his opponent, the events that Lesnar has headlined have been among the biggest buy-rates the sport of mixed martial arts has ever seen.
So it should come as no surprise that the UFC is now turning to their leading man to help promote the next season of their hit reality television series.
Particularly during down times in during the year, The Ultimate Fighter has historically done a great job of keeping fans interested while the company’s top fighters like Georges St. Pierre, BJ Penn, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, Anderson Silva, and Brock Lesnar are in training for their next bout.
But is Brock Lesnar in over his head as a coach for the show?
I think so—and here’s why.


Sam Greenwood/Getty Images
Perhaps the most glaring potential problem for Brock Lesnar as a coach on The Ultimate Fighter is his lack of experience. Lesnar will begin coaching in Season 13 of The Ultimate Fighter after having had just seven professional mixed martial arts fights.
Some would argue that Lesnar’s collegiate wrestling background is being overlooked in this assessment, but it’s not. It’s just that wrestling and mixed martial arts are two completely different sports.
Being an excellent wrestler does not guarantee being an excellent mixed martial artist, nor vice versa. The two sports are their own, unique competitions.
With only seven MMA fights in his career, there is a very real possibility that there will be numerous fighters on the show who actually have more experience than the man who is supposed to be coaching them.
No one would say that Lesnar doesn’t have the pedigree to be among the best pure wrestling coaches in the world, but his lack of mixed martial arts experience is a glaring hole in his ability to be an effective coach in this sport.


A big part of being a coach on The Ultimate Fighter is the fighter selection process. Winning coaches are often the ones who select the best fighters to begin with, even if they don’t necessarily make great decisions or teach much as a coach.
While we don’t know who the fighters will be in this season’s group yet, we do know from the first 12 seasons of the show that the fighters themselves often have varying levels of ability.
As casual fans, the strengths and weaknesses of each fighter aren’t always apparent to us—but they should be apparent to experienced MMA fighters and even more so to trainers.
Piggy-backing on the previous slide, Lesnar’s inexperience in the sport could lead to some bad decisions in the selection process.
We all remember when Quinton “Rampage” Jackson went out of his way to select Kimbo Slice with his first pick in Season 10 of the show. Slice is now out of the UFC and mixed martial arts as a whole, while fighters like Brendan Schaub, Matt Mitrione, and eventual winner Roy Nelson are having successful UFC careers. All three of them were selected by Rampage’s opposing coach, Rashad Evans.
Experts often talk of Jackson as being the worst coach in TUF history—until now.

Lesnar’s Assistant Coaches Will Not Be on the Level of Dos Santos’
I mean this as no disrespect for the men and women who train with Brock Lesnar up in Minnesota, but they just aren’t on the level of the ridiculous talent that Junior Dos Santos trains with every day.
Brock Lesnar will likely rely on his current coaches including Head Trainer Marty Morgan, Erik Paulson, and Jiu Jitsu trainer Rodrigo Medeiros.
His opponent, Junior Dos Santos, trains with what may be the best group in the world, the Black House (Casa Preta) fighting team based out of Brazil.
The team includes current champions such as pound-for-pound kings Anderson Silva and Jose Aldo, Rafael "Feijao" Cavalcante, and Ronaldo "Jacaré" Souza. In addition, legendary fighters such as the Nogueira brothers, Lyoto Machida, Paulo Filho, Pedro Rizzo, wrestling expert Mark Muñoz, and countless others help make up this unbelievable team.
No matter which of these impressive fighters Dos Santos chooses to help him coach, rest assured that Lesnar will not have the same caliber of help by his side

He’s Coming off of a Humiliating Loss


There’s a good chance that Brock Lesnar has never been as humiliated in his entire life as he was on October 23rd, 2010, when he was violently pummeled by Cain Velasquez, losing his UFC Heavyweight Championship in the process.
Rumors are that Dana White went many weeks without even talking to Lesnar after the loss, prompting many to believe that Lesnar had lost his focus.
While humiliation is often used as a source of bettering one’s self in the long run, Brock Lesnar is not your average kind of person. Lesnar has been known to be very snappy when things aren’t going his way and that could definitely play a factor in the way he interacts with team as well as his fellow coaches.
It’s odd that the UFC would choose to place Lesnar as a trainer so soon after his embarrassing defeat. We don’t have any idea how he will come back from the loss or if he will still be motivated in the same way as he was when people were calling him the “Baddest Man on the Planet.”

He Doesn’t Like the Camera in His Face


Despite being one of the most intriguing personalities that has ever stepped into The Octagon, it’s no secret that Brock Lesnar does not particularly enjoy being in front of the camera.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that he doesn’t like to show off when he’s in the cage or when he was in the WWE ring. What it really means is that Lesnar likes to keep his personal and professional lives completely separate.
Have you ever noticed that there really aren’t many, if any, photos of Lesnar and his family floating around on the Internet? Lesnar’s wife, former WWE wrestler Rena “Sable” Mero, is obviously not shy toward the camera but two of them are rarely seen together.
Lesnar is just a very private person. He doesn’t live the superstar lifestyle that many other fighters do.
“It’s very basic for me,” Lesnar said in an interview prior to his fight with Cain Valesquez. “When I go home, I don’t buy into any of the B.S.”
While The Ultimate Fighter is just a television show, it’s hard to get more up-close-and-personal than a reality television show where the cameras are in your face from sunrise to sunset.
It will be interesting to see how Lesnar responds.
His Standup Game Needs a Lot of Work


While Brock Lesnar possesses absolutely amazing power, he has not yet knocked out an opponent in a professional fight. As many striking experts would tell you, knockouts aren’t always about pure power—they are often about technique and precision.
Lesnar was absolutely destroyed on his feet against Cain Valesquez in his last fight and was even in trouble early in his previous fight with Shane Carwin. Many fans also forget that Lesnar was rocked for a moment in his second fight with Frank Mir.
There is no denying that Lesnar is an absolute animal in the cage and is capable of ending a fight at any time, but his technique on his feet simply isn’t at the level of being able to teach others.
It sounds crazy, but there is a very real possibility that Lesnar will get shown up by a fighter nearly half his size on his feet at some point during a sparring session on The Ultimate Fighter.
Just imagine a 280 pound Lesnar getting knocked out by one of his 170 pound students.
It’s reality television at its finest.
You Can’t Teach Natural Size and Strength


Perhaps even more than his wrestling experience, Brock Lesnar’s biggest asset may be his natural size and strength. At 6’3” and upwards of 265lbs, Lesnar is the kind of physical freak that looks like a genetics experiment gone horribly wrong—or right, depending on your outlook.
In the heavyweight weight class, Lesnar is allowed to weigh up to 265lbs when he steps on the scale the day before his fights. When he walks into the cage, rumors are that he is often back up to around 280lbs.
Meanwhile, much of Lesnar’s competition at the heavyweight weight class weighs in well below the 265lbs limit. In fact, in Lesnar’s fight at UFC 91, UFC legend Randy Couture weighed in at just 220lbs., giving Lesnar a massive 45lbs. weight advantage.
Not only does Lesnar’s pure weight advantage give him a tremendous leg-up on his competition, but his ability to use that weight advantage in his wrestling is something that he has exploited throughout his mixed martial arts and even his collegiate wrestling career.
Unfortunately for Lesnar, it’s going to be pretty hard to teach that to other fighters—especially when those fighters are going to be competing at the welterweight limit of 170lbs. All of the fighters Lesnar will be training will be within a very close weight limit to one another at fight time and none of them will have anywhere near the strength advantage that he does in his fights.
What works for Lesnar is simply not going to work for fighters who are competing at the same weight as one another.
He Doesn’t Seem to Care About the UFC


It took nearly two months for Brock Lesnar to start talking to Dana White again following his loss to Cain Velasquez at UFC 121.
While it is certainly understandable for Lesnar to want to take some time to himself and his family after a grueling training camp that ended in a tough loss, it is still difficult to understand why Lesnar thought it was appropriate to spend so much time without talking to his boss. If nothing else, letting White know that he was going to take some time to re-evaluate his career would have been appropriate.
But at the end of the day, Brock Lesnar only cares about himself. He cares about making money and providing for himself and his family in any way possible.
This was perhaps never more evident than when he was interviewed by Jim Rome last October. When asked about UFC middleweight fighter Chael Sonnen, Lesnar responded in a very odd way.
"Is he a fighter? I don't know who he is," Lesnar said. "I'm serious. Seriously."
This is a guy that is so self-absorbed that not only does he not care about scouting other talent for potential sparring partners or watching for weaknesses in potential future opponents, he apparently doesn’t even pay the slightest bit of attention to the biggest stories currently happening within his own company.
He knows that his UFC contract isn’t going anywhere. He knows that, win or lose, he is still the UFC’s biggest draw. He knows that Dana White really can’t do much about him taking time off to go hunting or just hang out at home.
It’s all part of this apparent desire to be a “celebrity” without having to deal with the media pressures of actually being a celebrity
Is His Head in the Right Place? Does He Want to Go Back to WWE?


Immediately after his loss at UFC 121, Brock Lesnar became entangled in a web of controversy surrounding a now infamous post-fight confrontation with WWE Superstar, “The Undertaker.”
In what initially seemed like a legitimate fight challenge from The Undertaker, real name Mark Calaway, Lesnar seemed to brush off the incident and has still not made a public statement regarding the situation.
When rumors began to surface on the Internet that Brock Lesnar had interest in making at least a short-term return to World Wrestling Entertainment, questions also began to arise about Lesnar’s commitment to the Ultimate Fighting Championship and his contract.
UFC President Dana White has since squashed rumors that Lesnar will be performing at WWE’s biggest annual pay per view event, WrestleMania, stating that Lesnar is under contract with the UFC and will not be allowed to break that contract.
Still, White did mention that he and WWE Chairman Vince McMahon have had a conversation about Lesnar performing at WrestleMania, which practically has to mean that Lesnar has been in conversation with both parties about the possibility as well.
With Lesnar’s mind outside of mixed martial arts, is it really the right time for him to start training other fighters?
The UFC Doesn’t Care Because the Show Will Make Money



Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images
The bottom line for the UFC is and will continue to be about the same thing—making money.
Brock Lesnar is the biggest draw in mixed martial arts today and putting him on a television show which is essentially a season-long hype for a fight between Dos Santos and him is simply a great business decision.
The UFC can easily build an entire pay per view event around the eventual bout between Lesnar and Dos Santos even though there won’t be a title on the line. Even if there isn’t any legitimate bad blood between the two combatants as there has been in seasons past.
The build will be so easy, in fact, that it’s pretty much a certainty that the fight will bring the UFC some of its biggest pay per view buy numbers of the year no matter what other fights are on the card.
Lesnar is that popular.
With champion Cain Valesquez recovering from injury, Dana White and the UFC somehow need to keep fans’ attention on the heavyweight scene. What better way is there to do that than having the company’s two hottest fighters (aside from Valesquez himself) live in a house and compete with one another every day for an entire season of a television show before they eventually get to touch gloves?
"I'm already prepared mentally—it’s going to be a tough season," Dana White said recently regarding the show. White went on to defend his selection of the former champion as one of the coaches for this season’s show.
“No matter what his record is, what the guy has accomplished in the short amount of time that he’s been in MMA is incredible,” White said. “To say the guy doesn’t have the credentials to coach The Ultimate Fighter is probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.”
Apparently the only credentials needed are the ability to make cash for the company.
Hey, it is what it is, Dana—but at least shoot it to us straight. It’s about making money, and you’re about to make a ton of it.