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Over the 13-year, 28-season history of The Ultimate Fighter, there have been plenty of memorable fighters produced by the reality show. A huge number of them have been massively successful – TUF has produced UFC champions like Rashad Evans, Michael Bisping and TJ Dillashaw as well as perennial contenders like Diego Sanchez, Tony Ferguson and Kelvin Gastelum.
However, the reality show hasn’t always been focused purely on great fighters. Like all great reality TV, plenty of the seasons over the years saw a large focus on some completely outrageous incidents; things that you never imagined would happen on the show. TUF has seen a roll call of fighters that became legendary following these moments, and while some people were shocked by them, at times they were also massively entertaining.
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Due to the longevity of TUF and the number of seasons over the years, this was a hard list to make, but here are the 10 most outrageous moments in the history of The Ultimate Fighter.
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#10: Jackson jumps the fence (Season 4)
2006’s Season 4 of TUF was subtitled ‘The Comeback’, and the cast featured 16 fighters who had previously appeared in the UFC and were looking for a way back into the world’s top promotion. The producers were pushing these 16 as real veterans, and thus they were all supposed to be highly professional. Outrageous incidents were expected to be at a minimum, but the season still managed one classic.
Still, the only man to outright knock out Nick Diaz, Jeremy Jackson was bringing a 7-4 record onto the reality show and was considered one of the favourites to win his season’s Welterweight tournament. But before he could even step into the Octagon, he wound up being booted from the house by Dana White.
His mistake? He decided that he’d jump over the fence – for those who don’t know, TUF contestants aren’t supposed to have contact with the outside world – to meet up with a female lifeguard he’d got talking to during a trip to a pool earlier that day. To take such a risk - particularly when the TUF house is literally packed with cameras - was a stunning move.
Unsurprisingly, Dana White was horrified due to the clear violation of the reality show rules, and quickly expelled Jackson from the house. To date, this remains the only time that a fighter on TUF has broken this rule.
#9: Scarola wants out (Season 6)
Season 6’s Joey Scarola must’ve thought he’d finally made it when he stepped onto the TUF set in 2007. A student of Matt Serra – one of that season’s coaches – Scarola also had a job as a jiu-jitsu instructor in one of Serra’s gyms and had even been the best man at Serra’s wedding. But despite being his mentor’s first pick, he went on to lose to Mac Danzig in the first round of the season’s Welterweight tournament.
Still, losing on TUF hadn’t stopped the likes of Josh Koscheck and Keith Jardine from going onto UFC success, and so all Scarola had to do, essentially, was continue to train for the remainder of his time on the reality show, and due to his Serra connection, he would basically have a free ticket into a UFC contract afterwards.
Unfortunately, this turned out to be impossible for the BJJ black belt. After his loss, Scarola slipped into a funk of sorts – understandable after such a big loss – but a pep talk from Serra appeared to have turned him around. Not so. Scarola simply wanted to leave the house and go back to his girlfriend in New York.
And incredibly – even after being informed by Dana White that if he left, he’d never fight in the UFC – and by Serra that he’d no longer have his job if he left – that was the choice Scarola made. After a full 3 episodes dedicated to his story, Scarola simply walked away.
A 2010 interview with Scarola saw him explain that he wasn't "mentally prepared" to live in the TUF house, which is understandable to an extent - but to see a talented fighter like him just walk away still made for stunning viewing.
#8: Noah's letter (Season 3)
Season 3’s Noah Inhofer became a TUF legend for years after the way he opted to leave the TUF house during 2006. A member of Team Ortiz, Inhofer had already submitted Jesse Forbes to make the semi-finals at Light-Heavyweight when he received a mysterious letter that turned out to be from his girlfriend.
Apparently, Inhofer’s girl was worried that he was cheating on her, and wanted him to call her immediately to explain himself. It was never quite explained why she thought this – did she think he was cheating prior to starting TUF? Or did she see TUF as an excuse for him to vanish for a while?
At any rate, Noah's request for a phone call fell on deaf ears, and so he felt that he had to quit the show immediately to return to her, leaving everyone from his coach Tito Ortiz to UFC president Dana White absolutely dumbstruck.
Years later, however, it appeared that Noah may have made the right decision. A 2015 interview with him revealed that he went onto marry said girlfriend and then gave up MMA to open a Crossfit gym with her in Hawaii.
#7: Leben spritzes the bed (Season 1)
Nobody was really sure exactly what to expect during the first season of TUF; after all, nothing quite like it had ever been televised before. After the first episode had ended though, despite no actual fights being shown, a ton of viewers were simply hooked. Part of this definitely had to do with the outrageous personality of TUF's original bad boy, Chris Leben.
Seen as one of the best prospects in MMA at the time, hardcore fans were excited to see Leben in action, but 'The Crippler' stunned everyone with his actions in the first episode. Essentially, the whole episode was the Leben Show, as he got incredibly drunk, talked a ton of trash, and then decided to urinate - or "spritz", in his own words - on fellow contestant Jason Thacker's bed.
The incident shocked everyone from Leben's fellow castmates to the viewers watching at home - but said viewers were perhaps even more gobsmacked when Leben showed up to training the next day and performed incredibly well for a man who'd been extremely drunk the night before. The episode showcased the wild side of Leben - and the hard-working side, too.
Leben would go on to have a successful career with the UFC that spanned almost a decade, but even as a hardened veteran, many fans still remembered him most fondly for this outrageous moment that arguably cemented the popularity of TUF for good.
#6: JT Money's Vegas rampage (Season 7)
2008's Season 7 saw a seminal moment in TUF history as for the first time, fighters had to win a preliminary fight to actually make it into the TUF house in the first place. What nobody realised prior to the season though was that the whole thing would end in a truly shocking way after a classic outrageous moment.
Jesse Taylor had come off as one of the more likable characters in the house during the season thanks to a laid-back personality as well as the fact that he was a simply hilarious drunk, even urinating himself on one occasion. He'd also proven himself to be an excellent fighter, and after 3 wins, he was on his way to the finals.
Or was he? Days prior to the end of the reality show tapings, the cast went on a night out in Vegas. And soon after, it was revealed that Taylor had gone on a drunken rampage of sorts, kicking through a limousine window and making a nuisance of himself in general.
As you can imagine, Dana White was not impressed. After dressing Taylor down verbally, he removed him from the finals - and had losing semi-finalists CB Dollaway and Tim Credeur face off to determine a replacement.
There was somewhat of a happy ending for Taylor, though; almost a decade later he re-entered the TUF house for Season 25 and managed to come out victorious, submitting Dhiego Lima in the final.
#5: The Upper Decker (Season 6)
Following Joey Scarola's exit in the third episode, 2007's Season 6 settled down into a relatively low-key series by TUF standards. That was until an outrageous - and downright hilarious - incident in the 11th episode. The moment happened when members of Team Serra were inside the house, while Team Hughes were still training.
Three eliminated fighters - Richie Hightower, Jon 'War Machine' Koppenhaver, and Troy Mandaloniz decided to play a prank on their opponents - namely by defecating into the tank of their toilet, causing feces to flood into the pan upon flushing, a trick otherwise known as an 'upper decker'.
When Team Hughes returned to the house, star fighter Mac Danzig was instantly annoyed by the drunken laughing of the trio, but when the prank was discovered, he stayed relatively calm. Jared Rollins, on the other hand, lost his head entirely, smashed the top of the toilet tank and angrily confronted Koppenhaver, who then tackled him onto a bed.
Just as it seemed like things would spiral entirely out of control, cooler heads prevailed. Koppenhaver apologized, and joined Mandaloniz in cleaning the toilet - a disgusting job to say the least. While the incident was puerile, it was still outrageous to watch - and became one of the highlights of the season.
#4: Put me back in (Season 5)
Over the years, one of the classic TUF tropes has always been the story of the fighter either struggling to make weight, or missing weight altogether. It seems to happen on every season – the perils of multiple fights in quick succession – and Season 18’s Anthony Gutierrez even missed out on a free hit in the semi-finals by botching his weight cut.
When you’re talking about weight cutting gone wrong on TUF though, only one man comes to mind – Season 5’s Gabe Ruediger. The craziest part? Gabe was a very skilled fighter. A former WEC champion and already a UFC veteran when he entered the TUF house, ‘Godzilla’ was actually – along with Joe Lauzon and Nate Diaz – one of the favourites to win the Lightweight tournament.
But it quickly became apparent that he was massively overweight for a man planning to compete at 155lbs. Despite weighing well over the Lightweight limit, Ruediger was even seen eating ice cream and cake in the house. But when he was matched with rookie Corey Hill, Gabe promised his coach BJ Penn that he’d make the weight.
On a whole episode dedicated to his struggles though, Ruediger failed in the most dramatic – and hilarious – way possible. He had to be dragged into a sauna by his teammates, he pedalled on a resistance bike at the speed of a glacier, and finally, he stripped his sauna suit off and collapsed outside, all the while begging Penn to “put me back in”.
Unsurprisingly, Ruediger was booted from the house by Dana White and quickly became a punchline; animated gifs of him being knocked out by slices of cake quickly appeared on the internet. Later on, he admitted he made an error with his behaviour on the show as he was attempting to use it purely as a "marketing tool".
And when his career recovered enough to make it back to the UFC in 2010, even he seemed to be in on the joke - presenting opponent Joe Lauzon with a cake after successfully making weight.
#3: The backyard brawl (Season 5)
It's pretty obvious from the title of the show that The Ultimate Fighter is a reality show about fighting. However, the UFC has always prided itself on being an ultra-professional set-up, and the only fights on TUF are supposed to take place in the Octagon. That's why it was so outrageous when, during Season 5, contestants Marlon Sims and Noah Thomas brawled in the backyard of the house.
The whole incident started innocuously, with Sims talking some trash towards Thomas for tapping out rather than passing out in his fight with Manny Gamburyan – despite Thomas pointing out that a kimura doesn’t force you to pass out, it breaks your arm and shoulder apart. Eventually, Thomas responded by challenging Sims to a fight on the finale, and that should’ve been that.
Except Sims wanted to throw down there and then, and fellow contestant Allen Berube, who wasn’t really involved in the conversation, suddenly decided to do his best impression of ‘Big’ John McCarthy and referee the whole thing. And from there, Thomas landed a wild sucker-punch and the two began to grapple, with the sequence ending with Sims dumping Thomas head-first onto a concrete flowerbed when he tried an armbar.
Somehow the pair still weren’t done, brawling again outside the house before Sims again dumped Thomas head-first onto concrete to defend another armbar attempt. They promised to continue the fight at the Finale, but of course, Dana White showed up the next day to send all three men who’d been involved packing.
White's reasoning was that he and the UFC brass had been working for years to show that MMA wasn't about brawls and street fights and by being involved in a backyard scrap, Sims, Thomas and Berube had basically brought the sport into disrepute. While the incident was undoubtedly outrageous, it remains a hugely memorable moment in the history of TUF over a decade later.
#2: Let me bang, bro! (Season 16)
By 2012 and Season 16, a lot of MMA fans had given up on TUF and the casual fans who’d been drawn in by the rivalries like Ortiz/Shamrock and Penn/Pulver in the earlier seasons had almost certainly departed. So to see a fighter from the 16th season suddenly become a genuine YouTube meme was truly outrageous.
The fighter’s name? Julian ‘Nitrane’ Lane. Sporting a red Mohawk hairdo, Lane stood out right away as a character to watch. Within days of being in the TUF house, he was shown sniping at fellow castmate Matt Secor for seemingly no reason. This was incredibly just a precursor for what was about to come.
Lane went on to lose to Bristol Marunde in the 4th episode of the season, but it wasn't until Episode 8 that his outrageous moment came. The episode saw a number of the contestants hit the bottle, and suddenly, a drunk Lane completely snapped.
‘Nitrane’ decided to challenge teammate Dominic Waters to a fight and from there he seemingly lost his mind, stalking around the house looking for Waters while the rest of the cast attempted to stop him. The incident finally came to a head when Lane broke into the bedroom where Waters was – and rather than attack him, he simply screamed at another teammate, Michael Hill, to “let me bang, bro!” before bursting into tears.
Eventually, the other fighters calmed Lane down, but by that point, the scene had become a meme on YouTube – usually set to the sounds of Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey. Quite what possessed Lane to act in such a manner is anyone’s guess; years later he couldn't explain it himself, but with that one simple – but outrageous – scene he wrote himself into TUF history and created an everlasting meme, too.
#1: Junie Browning's wild antics (Season 8)
Season 8 of TUF remains legendary to this day, a decade since it first aired, and that’s largely for the actions of one contestant – Junie ‘The Lunatic’ Browning. To say that nickname was apt would be an understatement, as Browning proved to be easily the most outrageous contestant in the history of the show – exploding into violent rages inside the house after the smallest provocation on numerous occasions.
Episode 4 of the season was where it all began; Browning and teammate Shane Nelson decided to get extremely drunk, and from there things degenerated badly, with Browning throwing a glass at Kyle Kingsbury, cutting his arm, and then stalking around the garden threatening to “bottle” the other fighters. This incident came to a head as Browning – a 155lber – had a pull-apart brawl with Light-Heavyweight Ryan Bader, before kicking another 205lber – Tom Lawlor – to the ground.
From there it was one wild incident after another. There was the moment that saw him leap over the cage to confront a victorious Efrain Escudero after he submitted Nelson – coach Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira managed to restrain him before he could launch an attack. There was the moment where he spat on Ronaldo Delgado’s Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, the moment where he launched a glass at Shane Primm, and so on.
People questioned why Dana White didn’t simply kick Browning off the show and send him home, but the reasoning was revealed later in the season. White felt that Junie was acting up in an attempt to make himself notorious by being kicked out, so he decided to let him stay, giving a famous quote: "this isn't Survivor, let's vote 'em off....you beat 'em off".
In the end, Browning was beaten by Efrain Escudero in the semi-finals. However, his outrageous antics were by far the most memorable part of what was an incredibly memorable season overall, and although he didn't go on to much UFC success post-TUF, his antics definitely warrant the top spot in terms of outrageous TUF moments.
