LAS VEGAS – Rather than a pay-per-view event, Michael Bisping and Jason “Mayhem” Miller will meet in a coach-vs.-coach fight at The Ultimate Fighter 14 Finale.
On Friday UFC officials announced the middleweights as coaches for the upcoming season of the reality series.
On Saturday, UFC president Dana White confirmed they’ll fight at the show’s live finale rather than a traditional PPV event.
Filming for the show, which is expected to feature bantamweights and featherweights, begins next month, and the season debuts in September on Spike TV. The live finale is slated for early December, possibly Dec. 3, in Las Vegas. It’ll air on Spike TV.
Coaches, of course, have fought at a live finale in the past, specifically “TUF 5” (Jens Pulver vs. B.J. Penn). Additionally, though it wasn’t part of the actual live finale, “TUF 3” coaches Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock headlined a Spike TV event a few months after the show’s conclusion. (That main event drew a staggering 5.7 million viewers.)
So why are Bisping and Miller fighting on Spike TV rather than PPV?
“Why?” White asked. “Because we want to do it. We were planning to do that anyway. We’ve done it before.”
Bisping (a “TUF 3” winner) and Miller (a veteran fighter and host of MTV’s “Bully Beatdown”) should bolster ratings for the live finale, which have averaged just two million viewers during the past two seasons.
In addition to Bisping vs. Miller, the finale will feature the finale of the 28-man, 32-slot tournament “TUF 14” tournament. Other cast members likely will fill the undercard of the show.
