Craig Jones has just been able to reveal that he has signed on to take part in the upcoming season of The Ultimate Fighter as part of the coaching staff. The twenty-ninth season will be contested by two teams of men at Middleweight and Bantamweight who will be captained by the reigning UFC Featherweight World Champion, Alexander Volkanovski, and his latest challenger, Brian Ortega. It’s unclear at this stage which team he will be joining as Ortega has famously been a longtime BJJ student of Rener Gracie, whereas Volkanovski represents City Kickboxing in Australia and has a brown belt under Joe Lopez.
Craig Jones has been able to reveal that the filming for The Ultimate Fighter will be putting a little bit of a strain on his schedule as it interferes with the preparation for his upcoming match with Tye Ruotolo at the next Who’s Number One event. As he said himself though, the opportunity is definitely one he can’t pass up and he is a favorite to win the match with Ruotolo anyway, so he should be able to successfully juggle both events.
As for the show itself, season 29 of The Ultimate Fighter will be setting the stage for the Alexander Volkanovski to make his first title defense since his pair of fights against Max Holloway. Ortega was originally scheduled to get his second chance at Featherweight gold at UFC 260 in March, but unfortunately the champion was forced to withdraw after testing positive for Coronavirus. That’s when the decision was made by UFC brass to take advantage of the delay and set up the next season of The Ultimate Fighter instead.
The full season 29 of The Ultimate Fighter will be available to watch on UFC FightPass, click here to subscribe and watch.
