‘The Ultimate Fighter: Team Serra vs. Team Hughes’ Premieres Wednesday, September 19 on Spike TV

UFC
Welterweight Champion Matt Serra and former UFC Welterweight Champion Matt
Hughes will serve as coaches for Season 6 of Spike TV’s highly-rated series,
“The Ultimate Fighter,” premiering Wednesday, September 19 at 11:00pm
ET/PT.

“The
Ultimate Fighter: Team Serra vs. Team Hughes” features sixteen of the best
up-and-coming mixed martial artists in the 170 lb. division from around the
world. The two finalists will square off in a live finale in December, with the
winner netting a six figure contract with the Ultimate Fighting
Championship(R), the premier mixed martial arts organization in the world. The
series recently wrapped production in

Las
Vegas. Hughes and Serra will fight each other in a UFC
pay-per-view event after the series finale in December. The series will assume
its regular timeslot of Wednesdays at 10pm on September 26.

Serra is
no stranger to “The Ultimate Fighter,” having won Season 4 last
November, earning the right to fight then-welterweight king,

Georges St-
Pierre.
Serra proceeded to stun the sports world by defeating St-Pierre at UFC 69 in
April to claim the title. A
Long Island
native, Serra began training under the legendary Renzo Gracie in the mid 1990’s
and was awarded the black belt in 2000, the first American to have such an
honor under Gracie. Among Serra’s most memorable victories prior to beating
St-Pierre are his defeat of Yves Edwards at UFC 33 and his win over Ivan
Menjivar at UFC 48. He currently runs two successful jiu-jitsu schools on
Long Island. Joining Serra on his coaching staff will be his
“The Ultimate Fighter 4” cast-mate Pete “Drago” Sell and
boxing coach Ray Longo.

One of the
sport’s all time greats, Hughes, from tiny

Hillsboro,
Illinois,
is a former UFC welterweight champion and four-time collegiate All-American
wrestler. A coach for The Ultimate Fighter 2, Hughes’ list of victories in the
UFC includes the sport’s biggest names, including Royce Gracie,

Georges St-
Pierre,
BJ Penn, Carlos Newton and Frank Trigg. Joining Hughes on his coaching staff
will be mixed martial arts star Robbie Lawler, Matt Pena, and Marc Fiore.

During the
six-week Ultimate Fighter competition, the sixteen men endure a grueling
regimen of jiu-jitsu, judo, muay thai, karate, boxing and wrestling. The
intense competition between the fighters continues after they leave the gym —
at The Ultimate Fighter House. These warriors are forced to live together,
knowing that any day they might be forced to fight each other in the famed UFC
Octagon.

In each
episode, opponents from each team are selected to square off in battle,
officially weighed in and then, in front of their teammates, coaches and the
Nevada State Athletic Commission, face off in two five-minute rounds with a
sudden death third round in the event of a draw.

Over the
first five seasons, the show has delivered approximately two million viewers
each week, often beating the NBA, NHL, MLB and NCAA football and basketball
head-to-head on Thursday nights with men 18-34.

Craig
Piligian of Pilgrim Films and Television, Frank Fertitta III, Lorenzo Fertitta,
Dana White of Zuffa, LLC, and Kevin Kay of Spike TV are the show’s executive
producers. Brian J. Diamond, senior vice president, Sports & Specials,
Spike TV is co-executive producer and Christopher Martello is executive in
charge of production for Spike TV.

Spike TV
is available in 91 million homes and is a division of MTV Networks. A unit of
Viacom , MTV Networks is one of the world’s leading creators of programming and
content across all media platforms.