THE CAST FOR the 22nd season of The Ultimate Fighter has officially been announced and Conor McGregor isn’t the only Irishman involved.
McGregor’s SBG team-mate and main sparring partner Artem Lobov is one of the 32 names who’ll feature on the next series of the UFC’s reality show.
Six weeks of filming for TUF 22 concluded last Wednesday in Las Vegas and the season premiere will air on BT Sport 2 at 4am Irish time on Thursday, 10 September.
The show will see a team of European lightweights, coached by McGregor, compete against their counterparts from the USA, who’ll be under the guidance of Urijah Faber.
Breaking with tradition, the two coaches won’t be squaring off at the end of the series as interim featherweight champion McGregor is already scheduled to face reigning title-holder Jose Aldo in Vegas on 12 December, with the finale taking place the night before — headlined by the meeting of featherweight contenders Frankie Edgar and Chad Mendes.
The 32 fighters will be whittled down to 16 in next week’s first episode, with each contestant competing in a preliminary bout in order to secure a place in the house for the duration of the season.
Lobov (11-10-1-1), a 29-year-old Russian-born fighter who’s been based in Ireland for the past 12 years, will be hoping to follow in the footsteps of SBG team-mates Cathal Pendred, Aisling Daly and Paddy Holohan by securing a UFC contract following an appearance on The Ultimate Fighter.
In spite of his mixed record, Lobov has defeated a host of top European fighters over the course of his career — Dave Hill, Martin Svensson and Andrew Fisher, for example — and has been stopped just once in 18 bouts.
Following the announcement of the cast, Conor McGregor took to Twitter to post the above picture of he and Lobov in Los Angeles last night. Perhaps the bumps and bruises on Lobov’s face suggest that he fought quite recently; a potential indication of the extent of his progress in the competition.
There are plenty of other names in the cast who may be familiar to Irish fans, including five more veterans of leading European promotion Cage Warriors. Among them are England’s Saul Rogers, who defeated UFC veteran John Maguire in Dublin in March of last year.
Team McGregor (Europe)
Artem Lobov, Abner Lloveras, David Teymur, Djamil Chan, Frantz Slioa, Marcin Wrzosek, Martin Delaney, Martin Svensson, Mehdi Baghdad, Mohamed Grabinski, Paulo Boer, Sascha Sharma, Saul Rogers, Sean Carter, Thibault Gouti, Vladimir Sikic.
Team Faber (USA)
Andres Quintana, Austin Springer, Billy Quarantillo, Brandon Ricetti, Brennan Sevin, Chris Gruetzemacher, Jason Soares, Johnny Nunez, James Jenkins, Jason Gonzalez, Julian Erosa, Mike Flach, Ryan Hall, Thanh Le, Tim Welch, Tom Gallicchio.
