'TUF 19' tryouts draw ex-Bellator champ Good, Cage Warriors' Pendred, 81 others

INDIANAPOLIS – Former Bellator MMA welterweight champion Lyman Good (15-3), Cage Warriors welterweight champion Cathal Pendred and former Cage Warriors middleweight titleholder Chris Fields (10-5), teammates from Ireland, were among more than 80 fighters who attended Tuesday’s open casting call for “The Ultimate Fighter 19.”

The 83 hopefuls – 56 middleweights and 27 light heavyweights – took part in tryouts at The Westin Indianapolis hotel in Indiana’s state capital. The tryouts coincided with Wednesday’s UFC Fight Night 27 card, which takes place at the nearby Bankers Life Fieldhouse.

UFC matchmakers Joe Silva and Sean Shelby were on hand to evaluate the fighters, who first were paired up for short grappling matches against one another – a process still taking place as of this writing. Those grappling sessions will lead to a first set of cuts. The remaining fighters then will hit pads before one more set of cuts and, ultimately, interviews with producers of the reality-competition series.

The tryouts were for Season 19 of the show, which is expected to take place in Spring 2014. Season 18 of the series has already filmed and wrapped, and it begins airing Sept. 4 (a week from tomorrow) on FOX Sports 1 with coaches Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate. Coaches for Season 19 have not yet been revealed.

Along with Good, Pendred and Fields, other notables at Tuesday’s tryouts included four-fight Strikeforce veteran Lumumba Sayers (6-4); six-fight Bellator vet Luis Palomino (21-8) – fighting up from his regular home at lightweight; Maximum Fighting Championship welterweight standout Dhiego Lima (8-1), brother of Bellator’s Douglas Lima; and unbeaten three-fight Bellator vet Kelvin Tiller (6-0).

Good won Bellator’s first welterweight tournament in 2009 and became the promotion’s first 170-pound champion. But 16 months later, while unbeaten at 10-0, he lost the belt to Ben Askren, who has held it ever since. Good went on to win five of his next seven fights, but the two losses came while trying to get another Bellator tournament win for another shot at the title. He dropped a split decision to Rick Hawn in the Season 4 semifinals and lost a unanimous call to Andrey Koreshkov in the Season 7 finals this past November. His most recent win was over Dante Rivera in April at Bellator 95, but in July, the promotion confirmed it had released Good, who became a free agent.

Pendred, who along with Fields is a teammate of former two-division Cage Warriors champ and recent UFC sensation Conor McGregor, won that promotion’s welterweight title in March with a unanimous decision victory over Gael Grimaud. He was supposed to put his title on the line for the first time in June against UFC vet Che Mills. But that belt wasn’t contested when Mills failed to make weight. Pendred fought him, anyway, and got a third-round TKO victory.

Fields won Cage Warriors’ middleweight title against Pavel Kusch this past September. But against Jesse Taylor in December at Cage Warriors 51, he was submitted in the second round. He fought Norman Paraisy in June at Cage Warriors 55, but couldn’t get back in the win column – instead settling for a draw.

Fighters ultimately selected to appear on the show are kept under wraps by UFC officials and the “TUF” production team until a public release, typically several weeks before the show begins airing.

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.

(Pictured: Joe Silva and Sean Shelby)