Former UFC Lightweight Champion Eddie Alvarez and former WSOF Lightweight Champion Justin Gaethje are coaching the upcoming season of the UFC Ultimate Fighter 26.
Kevin Lee, a top ranked lightweight in the UFC, isn’t much of a fan of the two fighters chosen to coach the upcoming TUF season.
“I think if you even ask anybody in the UFC, and they say (me vs. Gaethje) is the better fight to make,” Lee told MMA Junkie. “That’s the better TV. If they really wanted to push ‘TUF,’ I think that would’ve been the better option, and I think if you ask anybody in the know, they would’ve said the same thing. You’ve got Eddie, and you’ve got Gathje, who are both brain dead. They’re going to go in there, they’re going to talk, and they’re going to slur some words at each other. Nobody is going to watch it. It’s going to be terrible. I feel sorry for the women on the show, because they’re not going to get as many eyeballs.”
Lee has never faced either Alvarez or Gaethje in his MMA career, but the two coaches will battle each other at the end of the season.
The lightweight contender also wasn’t a fan of Gaethje’s UFC debut in the main event of the UFC Ultimate Fighter 25 Finale.
“Johnson, to me, he’s a journeyman. He’s always been a journeyman. And apparently beating Michael Johnson really means something in this game. You had Khabib (Nurmagomedov) that beat him, and people think he’s the No. 1 contender for beating Michael Johnson. To me, Mike’s a journeyman. What else can you say? I think he quit in the first minute of the first round. You see it in his eyes. You see in the first round (that) he quits, and he’s still able to hurt Gaethje. He’s still able to hurt him just off his skill and just off them back-the-(expletive)-up-off-me punches. You look at Gaethje’s skill, he’s basic. He’s hitable. He likes to be hit. I want to see how many punches he can take against a dangerous fighter,” says Lee.
It hasn’t been that long since the last time that Lee himself was in the Octagon, as he defeated Michael Chiesa in the main event of UFC Fight Night: Oklahoma City.
