When Diego Sanchez won the first season of the Ultimate Fighter, he’d been competing as a pro for just 3 years. Skip ahead to 2020 and Sanchez is one of MMA’s most experienced veterans, and one of the UFC’s longest tenured talents.
Other notable’s from the promotion’s first toe dip into reality television include Stephan Bonnar, Mike Swick, Forrest Griffin, Josh Koscheck, Kenny Florian, Nate Quarry, and Chris Leben. Of all those, Koscheck has been the only one to put foot in a cage in the last 5 years—taking on Mauricio Alonso at Bellator 172, two years after his last UFC bout in 2015 (Leben did make a brief run at bareknuckle boxing in 2018-19).