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Michael Bisping weighs in for UFC 114 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center May 28, 2010. UFC 114 takes place at the MGM Grand Grand Garden Arena Saturday.
Sunday, May 29, 2011 | 9 p.m.
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With filming set to begin in less than two weeks in Las Vegas, the coaches for the 14th season of “The Ultimate Fighter” have been officially announced.
UFC President Dana White confirmed this weekend that middleweights Michael Bisping (21-3 MMA, 11-3 UFC) and Jason “Mayhem” Miller (24-7 MMA, 0-1 UFC) will face off in the coaching slots on the show.
The season will be the first to feature the featherweight and bantamweight classes. As usual, the fighters on the show will compete in a tournament with the winner earning a $100,000 UFC contract.
Some small changes will be in the store for Bisping and Miller. The two will fight each other at the season’s finale card instead of a pay-per-view event shortly after the show’s conclusion.
“It’s what we wanted to do,” White said. “That’s what we were planning on doing anyway.”
White tried to give the coaching slot opposite Bisping to Chael Sonnen, one of the top middleweights in the world and a notorious trash talker. But those plans were derailed when the California Athletic Commission upheld an indefinite suspension against him.
Although White adamantly disagreed with the decision, he had to move on with his coaching search. That brought him to Miller, who the UFC recently re-signed after six years away from the octagon.
Miller, who was supposed to face Aaron Simpson at UFC 132, is well known as the host of the MTV show “Bully Beatdown.”
“There’s more that goes into selecting coaches than just, ‘are these guys going to talk to each other?’” White said. “I’m not into the coaches doing it, it’s going to happen with the guys anyway.”
Miller is now the envy of a handful of top middleweights who called Bisping out after a controversial win against Jorge Rivera at UFC 127. Sonnen, Vitor Belfort and Nate Marquardt all asked for a fight with Bisping.
Bisping has a divisive reputation, which was mostly crafted out of stints on "TUF." Bisping won the third season of the show by beating Josh Haynes in the finale.
He later coached against Dan Henderson during the eighth season. His team dominated the competition, but Henderson got the last laugh with a knockout victory over Bisping at UFC 100.
Case Keefer can be reached at 948-2790 or case.keefer@lasvegassun.com. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.
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