The Ultimate Fighter 28: Heavy Hitters Starts Tonight

The Ultimate Fighter 28: Heavy Hitters Starts Tonight

By Dan McConnell

The 28th series of the UFC’s reality series The Ultimate Fighter returns tonight Wednesday 29th August. In this season of The Ultimate Fighter it will feature Women’s Featherweights and Men’s Heavyweights. The fighters will be coached by Team Whittaker and Team Gastelum.

The coaches for this season are UFC Middleweight Champion and former TUF: The Smashes winner Robert Whittaker who will compete against The Ultimate Fighter 17 winner Kelvin Gastelum. A Middleweight title fight will take place between the two men at a later date with top contender Gastelum looking to take the crown away from the Middleweight Champion.

The Women’s Featherweight division is one that certainly needs a lot more talent added to the roster with a lack of real rankings and this is a last gasp attempt by the UFC to do so. With Cris Cyborg as champion there have been make-shift title defences for her with no real top contender in the division to fight.

For the Heavyweight division it is one that has always featured fighters in the mid-late stages of their careers. There is some youth with Blaydes and Volkov now in the mix at the top of the division but added talent to the roster is always welcomed with the increasing number of older veterans whose best days are behind them.

There has been a lot of speculation that this is the last ever series of The Ultimate Fighter with the UFC’s ESPN broadcast deal kicking in from January 2019. There is still some uncertainty but a huge indication of this confirmation was made when the UFC Gym in Las Vegas was put up for sale with the company moving into their new building the UFC Performance Institute.

It is also unclear when title challenger Gastelum will face off against the current champion Whittaker but it will likely be end of the year with the final two ppv’s upon us with UFC 231 and UFC 232. UFC 231 takes places in Canada on 8th December which doesn’t have a main event as of yet. This match-up is certainly main-event worthy.

As suggested this could be the last ever series of The Ultimate Fight. Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contender Series has been a huge success in finding talent to build on the UFC roster which seems set to overtake The Ultimate Fighter as main contributor to finding rising talent.