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| "You're gonna get hit!/You're gonna get knocked out!/You're gonna feel it/This is the ultimate!" - actual lyrics to the theme song |
That is not to say that there aren't some reality shows I've watched in the past. I watched the first season of Survivor (Gervis got robbed!) back when the entire genre was still a novelty. I watched the first season of Jersey Shore to see what all the fuss was about, only to find the fuss as actually about other peoples' fuss in New Jersey. And as the title of the post indicates, I watch The Ultimate Fighter (hereafter referred to as TUF). As a genre, though, I think Reality is slightly below the average youtube video in terms of artistic merit.
Despite this, I was watching a rerun of TUF and was thinking "man, I actually still watch this show, dozens of seasons in (they do two a year, like Survivor)." Does that make it the greatest reality show in TV history by default? Absolutely, yes. But here are some other reasons it's the best and/or most significant reality show ever.
A FEW KEY NOTES BEFORE WE START:
- When I say "significance," I have decided that in this case it means a given show's effect on the actual REAL world. Some reality shows have had great effects on the world of TV and how it's made (Cops, Survivor, Idol) but have not really influence the real world in a big way beyond that.
- You will notice I often compare TUF to Idol. That is because by the above definition, I believe them to be the TWO most significant reality shows ever. While Idol hasn't had the impact on pop culture that TUF has (giving birth to a few popular singers and a popular style of reality show is not on par with bring an entirely new sport into the mainstream), it has had more impact than any other show I can think of.
It's Actually Kind of Real
The fundamental problem I have with "reality" TV is that it's called reality tv. It's a lie. There is nothing real about Jersey Shore, or Gene Simmons' Family Jewels. They're all scripted and on top of that, twisting what "real" even means, which is a pretty fundamental concept. Is real hiring my friend to play Nick Simmons' friend in that episode where he tours college and DOESN'T fuck the girl who is is tour guide? Is real...whatever goes on on that Kardashian show? I doubt it, though I've managed to stay away from that one entirely.
But that's only one type of reality show. Then there are the competition games, the category into which TUF falls easily. Shows like Survivor, The Bachelor/ette, Real World, Road Rules, Real World vs. Road Rules, The Mole, The Amaazing Race, American Idol, et. al. The problem with those shows is that they are constructed games that are at once nothing to do with reality and quite easy for the producers to control based on contestant likability. And producers have been known to do that. You may notice I'm not linking these statements about how reality tv is made. That is because I believe it to be common knowledge, so I'm not bothering.
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| "What do you mean? There's no way a producer could force this guy he put on TV to pick one of these girls by threatening to fire him off camera." - Nobody at all |
That kind of thing is impossible within TUF. Sure, they edit the hell out of the footage they have and do all the reality TV tricks we all see a billion times daily like inserting reaction shots from earlier or dubbing sounds like "oh no you di'int" and "gasp!" over certain parts to create tense moments that may never have existed. But elimination is based on one thing and one thing only: who wins the fight.
Now, people may want to shout about how fights can be fixed, but fights only get fixed when there is betting involved. And you can't bet on TUF because the results are revealed on TV months after the fights happen. Not only that, it behooves the UFC to have the best fighter win the contract, as paying crappy fighters who are good TV characters is not the business that the company is in (yes, they do hire freak shows sometimes, like with Junie "Fights Thai Women in Bars" Browning, but usually only for a fight or two) So why would the fights be fixed? They wouldn't. The guy who wins his fights wins the show. It is ACTUAL competition. Usually that's called sports. Here, it's reality TV.
It Produces Actual Successful Professional Fighters
There is yet another sub-category of the competition reality show that I call that "aspiring professional _____" category. Shows like American Idol ("Aspiring Professional Singer") or Canadian Idol ("Aspiring Part-Time Professional Singer"), or Star Search (Aspiring Professional Anything At All Please Look At Me). And of course, TUF.
The Idol series has been pretty damned good about producing successful singers. Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Adam Lambert, Clay Aiken, and Jennifer Hudson have all gone on to make very good money (great money in Clarkson, Underwood and Lambert's cases) singing, while Hudson has done well in film and music, winning an Oscar for Dreamgirls. Canadian Idol produced Hedley before it went under, who I'm told is popular in Canada. The rest of the talent search shows fall well short of Idol (as amazing as they are at dancing, I haven't heard hide nor hair of any of the winners of SYTYCD in mainstream pop culture since their seasons ended). But if you take a long look at TUF, it leaves all of these shows in the dust in terms of impacting the industry into which it is supposed to be a door for contestants. Like Idol, the UFC often offers contracts to fighters who didn't win but looked good (or became popular) on the show. Let's break down, real quick, some of the successful TUF alumni. I'll start with the picture I already put in the article at the beginning, the poster for season 1 (2005)
Starting with the top row, third from left is Bobby Southworth, now too old to be relevant, but once was the Strikeforce light heavyweight champion. Right of him is Forrest Griffin (season one's winner at Light Heavyweight, now an icon of the sport and the former UFC light heavyweight champ. Next to the right is Stephan Bonnar, who has enjoyed a nice career in the UFC as a gatekeeper. To his right is Mike Swick, a contender at middleweight AND welterweight.
On the bottom row we have Kenny Florian second from left, who fought for the UFC lightweight belt twice and the Featherweight belt once (he lost all three times). To his right is Nate Quarry, who fought for the Middleweight strap in the UFC once and has always been a fan favourite. Diego Sanchez is to Quarry's (winner at lightweight) fought for the Lightweight belt. Chris Leben, fourth from right remains in the UFC and has been a crowd-pleaser his whole career, and the Fraggle Rock character to Leben's right is Josh Koscheck, one of the most hated and talented welterweights in the sport. Koscheck recently fought for the Welterweight title. And that's just season one.
Other successful alumni include Rashad Evans, season two winner (former light heavyweight champ and current #1 contender in that same weight class), Joe Stevenson (fought for lightweight belt), Gray Maynard (fought lightweight champ Frankie Edgar to a draw before losing a rematch), Matt Serra (former welterweight champ and lightweight #1 contender), Patrick Cote (fought for middleweight title) and Manny Gamburyan (fought for the WEC [now UFC] featherweight title).
Keep in mind this is real live sports. Even being a longtime gatekeeper/journeyman like Bonnar means you're one of the best fighters on the planet. For Idol to match the sheer number of alumni that reached the pinnacle of their weight class as either champion or at least fighting in a championship match, they need to start producing more Grammy wins than just Clarkson's two and Underwood's many (I stopped counting at five, holy shit she's an awards juggernaut) and Hudson's Oscar. That's three people who have seen the mountaintop in their field, compared to the dozens.
What's more, now that the UFC has consumed all the competing organizations in the MMA-world like some kind of Las Vegas-based Kirby, it has attained a status within its sport similar to that of the NFL or NBA. It's the UFC or the minor leagues, simple as that. So for the new fighters on the show that are coming into the UFC, simply making it in to the league is like playing in the NFL is for football players. It IS the mountaintop. Anything else is gravy.
It's Responsible for the Success of the Entire Sport as we Know it Today
As impactful as Idol has been on pop culture, most of that impact has been felt on television. It, at best, revolutionized TV (I don't think that it did), but it certainly didn't revolutionize music or the music industry. SYTYCD didn't revolutionize dance, and Pros vs. Joes didn't create a magical new path through which average joes could become professional athletes. TUF did.
When the show was founded in 2005, if you were a mixed martial artist fighting anywhere but in the UFC, you languished in obscurity. Hell, even if you were in the UFC, you were obscure to everyone but MMA fans. The sport and its fans were very much a sub-culture at that time, akin to punk rock before it broke into the mainstream. Fighters were paid peanuts to fight in bars with floors covered with peanut shells. Regulation of the sport was sketchy at best in most states. Not only did TUF create a path for aspiring fighters to get out of that world and into the UFC, but in one fell swoop it brought the sport to the mainstream world's attention with a dazzling finale fight for the TUF Season 1 contract between Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar.
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Griffin and Bonnar after the fight. This picture only says a few words:
"You owe us for life, Dana White."
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Via a reality show.
You never hear "I only got into listening to music because of American Idol." You hear that kind of thing about TUF. MMA went from illegal in many states to where it is today: showing fights on network TV and dominating the pay-per-view market, having all but replaced boxing as the world's go-to combat sport.
Suck on that, Simon Cowell.
TUF Allows People Who Are Actually Qualified to Participate
I have long harbored dreams of being a sports-talk radio host. Recently, a local Bay Area station called The Game announced plans for a new contest, called Lucky Break, which was basically American Idol or TUF for talk show hosts, the winner getting a one year contract and their own show on the station. I was sad because I couldn't go out for the contest because I'm leaving town in April and would have to turn down the contract offer (like that girl on The Bachelor who turned down the proposal). Then I read the rules and found out I also can't enter because I've been a paid member of the media in the past 2 years.
This is something nearly all of these shows do. You can't go on Idol if you have an existing recording contract or even if you have an agent, you can't go on The Next Food Network Star if you have ever hosted a cooking show or if you have an agent. It goes like that on most shows. Not so with TUF. With only one exception I can call to mind, every single contestant has had at least one professional MMA fight before coming on the show. Hell, TUF 4: The Comeback was centered around the concept of FORMER UFC FIGHTERS trying to make a return to the organization.
| Martin Yan's been on national tv for so long he looks like asian-Fez on his book cover, and he wouldn't be allowed to seek a higher-rating spot on the Food Network. But that idiot from Top Chef: Just Desserts was given 6 weeks of exposure because he flipped out so hilariously. |
That's right, instead of random-ass people who haven't even come close to putting in the time or paying their dues in their industry getting a HUGE leg up over those who HAVE/ARE paying their dues like Idol does, TUF take fighters who have been working at this for years and gives them a venue for exposure and a possible route to the pinnacle of the sport.
Quite simply, nothing has effected the sport it purports to show us on TV like TUF, and if that's not the mark of a significant reality show, I don't know what it is.
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