When any show gets into its 24th season, they’ve got to do something big to spice things up.
For the UFC’s flagship reality series The Ultimate Fighter, this means making the prize for winning the latest season something that has only been done twice before.
In a press release on Tuesday, the UFC confirmed the winner of season 24 of the TUF will get an immediate shot at the promotion’s flyweight title in December.
The title fight will also serve as the show’s finale, with 16 flyweights competing for the right to take the championship that currently belongs to Demetrious Johnson, the only flyweight champion in UFC history.
Johnson faces Henry Cejudo on April 23 at UFC 197, but is heavily tipped to continue his unbeaten run since switching to 125lb.
A UFC title has been used as the prize at the end of two previous The Ultimate Fighter seasons, although Carla Esparza’s strawweight victory at the end of Season 20 was the first time such a title existed in the promotion.
But the end of the fourth season of the show saw one of the biggest shocks in MMA history when Matt Serra took Georges St-Pierre’s welterweight crown at UFC 69.
Tryouts will take place April 25 in Las Vegas and filming will begin in June. The show is set to premiere August 31 on Fox Sports 1.
