The UFC are finally braced to make a push into the expansive Latin American market by announcing a new season of ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ reality show in the region.
Filming of ‘The Ultimate Fighter: LatinoAmerica’ is scheduled to start filming in the Spring of this year in Las Vegas and the hunt is now on to find the cast of fighters who’ll compete on the show.
Applications will be open to Spanish speaking fighters with at least three fights on their record from Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela.
“Latin America has become an enormous market for the UFC and we are excited to take it to the next level with The Ultimate Fighter,” UFC President Dana White said as the next international edition of the show was announced. “After the success of launching the UFC Network and the tremendous growth of our fan base, our focus now consists in finding and developing the best talent in the market. We want to find the next star, the next fighter that will do what Anderson Silva did for Brazil. We want to offer the fans a homegrown hero.”
The UFC has enjoyed major success in Brazil over the past few years, with ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ reality show being partly responsible for that, and so they clearly now have high hopes that they can replicate that success in the rest of Latin America.
Brazil has always been a mecca for MMA talent though, so a lot of the groundwork had already been laid for the sport to be successful there and it’ll be interesting to see how these other countries respond to the show, and what level of talent can be unearthed there.
