Dana White's Contender Series
Dana White’s Contender Series | Eight Years In
Examining The Impact Of The Annual Talent-Search Series And The Legacy Being Built
There have been 76 episodes of Dana White’s Contender Series across the eight standard seasons, plus an additional three all-Brazilian episodes which took place in August 2018.
I’ve previewed, watched, and recapped the vast majority of those main season episodes, and have gone back to check out the all-Brazilian shows a couple times, as well, since they featured a bunch of fun fights and several competitors that have since gone on to compete inside the Octagon. The show that I have (and everyone else) has reduced to the shorthand DWCS has been my passion project since its inception, and tracking the trajectory of the men and women to compete on the show has been something near and dear to me from the very early going.
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There has been a total of 389 fights that have taken place under the DWCS banner, producing 287 graduates, with another 42 athletes that passed through the series at one point or another eventually landing in the UFC.
As of today, there are 196 athletes who earned contracts that remain on the roster, which is a retention rate of 68.3 percent. Sure, that number is slightly elevated by the fact that everyone from Season 8 this year and just about everyone from Season 7 are still on the roster, but even removing those 88 competitors and fights from the totals only drops the retention rate by 2.2 percent.
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In terms of competitors with ties to the annual talent-search series, there are 238 athletes total on the UFC roster right now. Given that there have been 726 athletes (give or take one or two) that have competed on the show over the eight seasons and a little bit, that means that 32.78 percent of athletes that competed on the show remain on the roster right now.
Some people will look at that number as an indictment, but the fact that greater than 30 percent of the athletes to pass through the show have been able to maintain a place on the roster speaks to the level of talent that has been cultivated over the years.
As does the fact that there are 30 athletes that have competed under the DWCS banner currently positioned in the UFC fighter rankings, including the two former champions to have come from the show, Jamahal Hill and Sean O’Malley, and the two additional athletes that have competed for UFC gold, Alex Perez and Mayra Bueno Silva.
To put that another way, there are 176 available spots in the rankings — champions and 15 contenders across 11 divisions — and 17 percent of those spots are made up of DWCS grads.
If one of the chief aims of the show is to discover and add elite talents to the UFC roster, the fact that DWCS grads make up 17 percent of the rankings — and has already produced two champions and an additional two title challengers — is a strong indication that that goal has been accomplished and then some.
But it’s not simply a numbers things.
Top Knockouts | Dana White's Contender Series, Season 6
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Top Knockouts | Dana White's Contender Series, Season 6
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Year-after-year, this show has done what so many fight fans constantly claim they want from the UFC, providing them with both an opportunity to get to know the athletes set to compete inside the cage in a deeper, more meaningful way and delivering consistently entertaining action every Tuesday night for 10 consecutive weeks at some point during the summer or fall.
It launched O’Malley into the stratosphere before he ever hit the Octagon, with his “Welcome to the Suga Show” reaction and Snoop Dogg screeching his last name repeatedly alongside Urijah Faber becoming the breakout moment from Season 1 and arguably the series as a whole.
Part of what made Caio Borralho someone people watched closely and rooted for as soon as he joined the UFC roster is that he had to earn two wins on Season 5 in order to convince the show’s namesake that he merited an opportunity to compete on the biggest stage in the sport. Thus far, the results have been outstanding: Borralho is 7-0 inside the Octagon and currently sits at No. 6 in the middleweight rankings.
And for every story like Carlos Prates’ this year, where he raced into the welterweight Top 15 during his rookie campaign being a member of the Class of ’23, there are fighters like Kyler Phillips and Dan Ige that earned wins during their appearances on the show, but didn’t earn contracts, only to eventually find their way into the Octagon and the rankings in their respective divisions.
On top of that, it feels like the level of talent coming through the show is getting better in recent years.
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Jailton Almeida, Jack Della Maddalena, and Jasmine Jasudavicius all earned contracts in Week 3 of Season 5.
Week 8 in Season 6 delivered Farid Basharat, Ikram Aliskerov, Trevor Peek, Bruna Brasil, and Daniel Marcos to the roster; those five are a combined 14-6 with one no contest through 21 Octagon appearances, with Basharat, Aliskerov, and Marcos all profiling as potential Top 15 talents, Peek providing non-stop entertainment every time he competes, and Brasil coming off her best performance to date earlier this year against Molly McCann at UFC 304.
Along with Prates and his fellow Fighting Nerds Jean Silva and Mauricio Ruffy, Season 7 also saw Payton Talbott, Hyder Amil, Oban Elliott, Jean Matsumoto, Vinicius Oliveira, Andre Lima, and Ramon Taveras matriculating from the regional ranks to the UFC roster. Those seven athletes are a combined 17-0 in the UFC thus far, and when you add the wins of the Nerds into the mix, you get 10 members of the Class of ’23 putting up an incredible 26-0 mark in a little over a year on the roster.
And the group that just graduated from Season 8 could very well end up being the best of the bunch.
Oh — and all of this says nothing about what an incredible developmental ground it has proven to be when it comes to cultivating new talent for the UFC broadcasts as well, as Brendan Fitzgerald, Dan Hellie, Daniel Cormier, Michael Bisping, Paul Felder, and Laura Sanko have all gained invaluable reps on the mic over the years, eventually growing into fixtures on live events and the UFC Weigh-In Show.
For me, there is no question that Dana White’s Contender Series has been a talent gold mine and an absolute home run over its first eight seasons. For those still not convinced, I’ll leave you with this:
There have been 44 fighters that won a season of The Ultimate Fighter where a championship belt wasn’t awarded or a title opportunity wasn’t guaranteed; only four of those athletes — Rashad Evans, Michael Bisping, Kamaru Usman, and Julianna Pena — have gone on to claim UFC gold.
O’Malley and Hill were the third and 54th competitors to garner contracts from the main seasons, and so while the number of overall swings is much greater than with The Ultimate Fighter, the immediacy of the returns and the overall impact of this series are undeniable.
I can’t wait for Season 9!