MMA Weekly reports that Vitor Belfort and Wanderlei Silva have been picked as the coaches for The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil. It will be the first international version of the series.
Via MMA Weekly:
The format for the show will run similar to the early seasons of TUF in the United States, with the fighters living and training in the house for six weeks before squaring off in a finale.
TUF: Brazil will debut March 25th in Brazil with the finale in June. Although it is not known where it will be shown in the United States Fuel TV will be the likely landing spot.
Payout Perspective:
This will be an intriguing TUF considering the past between Belfort and Silva and the unknown of how different TUF Brazil may be. When the UFC first indicated it would take TUF international, Dana White stated that the Philippines would be the first stop. Certainly, the switch to Brazil makes sense considering the great success it had this summer with the UFC’s return as well as the buzz for UFC 142 in January.
Which TUF are you more interested in seeing: Faber-Cruz or Belfort-Silva?
I assume the show will be in Portuguese, so will Fuel really air TUF:Brazil straight up? Are we gonna be reading an English subtitled version of the typical TUF shows — pranks, manhood insults, more pranks, more insults, drinking, a house fight, drunken crying and bro-hugs, then back to pranks and manhood insults?
Maybe some condensed weekly wrap-up in English that just shows the fights.
There’ll be some curiosity about how a foreign TUF will work. And the hardest of the hardcores will watch anything UFC I guess. Not a lot of Portuguese speakers in the US, though.
And once you have several around the world – Brazil, Philippines, etc – there can be some weekly global TUF update show that shows the fights and some lead-up drama.
I doubt it changes much from country to country – presumably a clip of dude A calling dude B a woman and then trashing his stuff, followed by a clip of dude B calling dude A a homosexual and then trashing his stuff. and then they fight. Pretty much the universal lead-up to most dude fights on the planet.
My guess is the plan is to build interest and tv relationships in the host country. Showing them on Fuel will not appeal to everyone for the reasons you indicated, but US viewers can tape (dvr) them and just fast forward to the fights or interesting scenes with the coaches (my plan).
This will also help build up stables of local fighters (and weigh classes) or even Dana’s grand plan of Global TUF champs fighting each other for a contract with the ufc (seems like a longshot). I think it is more about local branding and local TV than anything else though.
Yeah, I think TUF: Brazil is a great idea — for growing the UFC in Brazil (and other Portuguese speaking nations).
My assumption is this will end up like Big Brother, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, the Idol series, etc. Every country has their own version. But nobody watches the versions from other countries in other languages, it’s just not entertaining to watch reality tv bickering and personal drama in a foreign language.
A TUF style show can succeed in other countries that speak the same language, though. I could see a TUF: Latin America done in 100% Spanish that could feature Mexican, Cubans, Venezuelans – plus US-born Mex-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc. It could air throughout Latin America plus here in the states on Univision or some spanish language channel.
Or they could do a TUF: Mexico that is all Mexicans and Mex-Americans. Have those be the two teams. That would generate a lot of heat and interest — every week a US born Mex-American vs a native Mexican battle it out to prove who’s more Mexican. That would be good TV for the spanish language market — the Mexican vs Mex-American house divide would create a lot of drama. Every week its LA vs Mexico City, Dallas vs Guadalajara. Chicago vs Tijuana.