The Suicide Six: As The Remaining Members Of The Ultimate Fighter Season 1 Approach The End Of Their Careers, Brutality Awaits.

The first article I ever wrote on MMA was a plea for professional contact sports to drop the charade surrounding performance enhancing drugs and either provide a reasonable, safe, doctor monitored drug program to all competing athletes or make real inroads into removing the drugs completely. My reasoning for wanting the playing field to be leveled was the recent medical confirmation that repeated blows to the head, no matter how forceful, can lead to irreversible brain trauma. I thought, "it's bad enough that these athletes are risking their long term mental and physical health. If they are competing against supermen, it's infinitely worse."

That was about a year and a half ago. Of course, nothing has really changed. Contact sports regulators are content to address the issue with window dressing (see the UFC's new drug testing policy, or Alistair Overeem being allowed to submit to a random drug test some weeks after it was requested). Meanwhile, we've had a handful of high profile PED busts in MMA over the last 18 months, proving once again that yes, there is indeed a problem. This morning Bloody Elbow's Brent Brookhouse, who has been (to my eyes, at least) the most vocal member of the MMA media/MMA blog-o-sphere on the issue of traumatic brain injury, penned a piece on Gary Goodridge. Goodridge has been officially diagnosed with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (boxer's dementia) at the age of 46.

Goodridge is the first high profile MMA fighter to discuss his issues publicly. He is surely not going to be the last. Chuck Liddell, the most popular mixed martial arts fighter of the past decade, ended his career after suffering three consecutive knockouts, two of which were of the one punch variety and all of which were difficult to watch. Will we be reading that Chuck has been diagnosed with CTE one day? I suspect Chuck won't be as open about his health as Goodridge has been. Gary is promoting his autobiography and can likely use all the publicity he can get. Whether he would otherwise be sharing this bit of tragic information with us is debatable.

Goodridge and Liddell both come from the "Pride era" of mixed martial arts history, which lasted approximately a decade from the mid nineties until 2005. If they are the poster boys for traumatic brain injury from an era gone by, one must wonder who will be the unfortunate souls from the current era to take their place?

The end of the Pride era was brought about partly by poor business practices but, primarily, it was due to the rise of the UFC, and that in turn can largely be attributed to the success of the first season of The Ultimate Fighter reality show. If the popular television program shown on Spike TV ushered in the next era, it only makes sense that some of the era's biggest stars came from the shows epic first season.

Forrest Griffin, Stephan Bonnar, Diego Sanchez, Josh Koscheck, Chris Leben, Mike Swick. These are names that just about every fan knows from their time on the reality show. They are also the only remaining cast members still competing in the UFC, though their days are numbered.

Griffin has lost three of his past five fights by TKO or KO, including a particularly bad loss to Shogun Rua at UFC 134 this past summer. Sanchez has yet to suffer a serious KO loss, but he took extensive damage in three of his last four fights, courtesy of BJ Penn, John Hathaway and Martin Kampmann (in a fight that Sanchez won, no less). Leben suffered a nasty KO loss to Brian Stann at the start of 2011 and he is currently serving a year long suspension for using pain killers prior to his last fight, another TKO loss to Mark Munoz. Koscheck is 34 years old and looked every day of it while eeking out a split decision victory over Mike Pierce. He faces heavy handed destroyer (and a guy who knocked out his best friend and training partner in 12 seconds) Johny Hendricks in May. Swick has been dealing with serious health issues (not related to his brain, thankfully) for awhile and hasn't fought in the UFC since February of 2010, some two years ago. If he ever returns, he'll be playing catch-up in a division full of young killers.

Stephan Bonnar is just about the only one of the bunch who hasn't lost a step. Bonnar did not have nearly the same success as his TUF counterparts in his first few years after the show, settling into a role as a gatekeeping brawler instead of challenging for a title. In what is a bit of cool irony (as opposed to the usual cruel irony), he has re-invented himself over the course of his past three fights, abandoning stand up wars in favor of a calculated ground attack. Did coming up on the losing end of a couple brawls early on in his UFC career drive Bonnar to see the writing on the wall and make a change before it was too late? You'd have to ask him, but it doesn't seem much of a stretch to me.

Meanwhile, Sanchez faces Jake Ellenberger tomorrow night in the main event of the first UFC on FUEL offering. The fight will go a long way in determining the future of the welterweight division. Should Sanchez fall in devastating fashion, it could also mark the beginning of the end of the TUF era.