Ranking every season of The Ultimate Fighter from worst to best

18. The Ultimate Fighter 8: Team Nogueira vs. Team Mir

This season could be underrated based on the overall production. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Frank Mir were two of the greatest grapplers the heavyweight division has ever seen. This made for a great season and the fights themselves were pretty solid.

The main critique here would be the overall trajectory of the fighters. Ryan Bader won the light heavyweight tournament, but despite all the hype, he never really lived up to it after fighting Jon Jones. He was a wrestler with a powerful punch. At the UFC level, guys are able to hang with that.

For the lightweights, Efrain Escudero beat Phillipe Nover in the final and was 11-0 at the time. There was a lot of promise, but after beating Cole Miller for his 12th win, he never really got it going again.

17. The Ultimate Fighter 20: A Champion Will be Crowned

TUF 20 deserves a lot of credit for building the strawweight division in the UFC. Except for a few fighters, the entire cast made up most of the strawweight division as the UFC starting building their female weight classes.

So many names came out of this season like, Joanne Wood, Randa Markos, Jessica Penne, Tecia Torres, Bec Rawlings, and Angela Hill. Most of these fighters have been ranked in the top 10 and are still there.

The biggest takeaway was Rose Namajunas and Carla Esparza. Esparza was schooling everyone with her wreslting and was able to lock up a third round submission to defeated Namajunas. The sad part about this season is that it was before the social media and popularity era. the story of Esparza selling her Harley Davidson motorcycle to make it by was one of the sadder stories in the UFC.

Despite the boring aspect of the fight, it was nice to see Esparza not only win the title again, but fight Namajunas once more.