Who Will Be the Chris Leben/Junie Browning of TUF 10?

Virtually every season of TUF has featured some drama amongst the cast members. And virtually every season has brought a certain amount of very marketable notoriety to the cast members who become the fighter fans love to hate. Chris Leben pioneered the role in season one and Junie Browning perfected it in season eight. So who will it be this year?

I did a post back in July speculating who might be the heel of this season of The Ultimate Fighter.  Wes Sims was already emerging as the odds on favorite to seize that ground and he's ramped up his charm offensive in the latest round of publicity before the series debuts tonight. Here's Wes talking to Heavy.com:

After I had surgery on my elbow, I had some really hard times. I was living homeless. I actually enjoyed being on the Ultimate Fighter. At least I was in out of the rain. The house in Vegas was great for me. I was living in a sleeping bag. Yeah. The only difference between me and Evan Tanner was he died.

But then he reveals an unexpected twist:

I'm preparing to give back to my fans. On September 17th, in Chicago, Illinois under I-55 in Cicero, The Wes Sims Fan Expo. I'm going dead into the mecca of the homeless. These are my kind of people and I'm giving back. Food and drinks, gear and t-shirts. If fans are willing to come down into that area, they'll get free stuff too. We've got all kinds of stuff going on. September 17th, 2-4 PM. Right during traffic too. Right during rush hour.

So if Sims might not be all bad, who's that leave us with? Well there's the ex-con, Jon Madsen:

Madsen last spent time in jail in 2006 serving seven months for a third DUI conviction. That's rock bottom for a guy who defeated Lesnar as a prep sophomore wrestler in South Dakota and went on to win the Div. II National Wrestling title at South Dakota State in 2000 as a sophomore.

But looks like he's reformed:

"If you want to compete, live healthy, you can't be out drinking and drugging, partying like that," Madsen told Cagewriter he lived a Hedonistic life for a long time. "You just can't do it. Obviously, I don't want to be locked up."

Or the kid from the abusive home, Abe Wagner:

"I thought he was going to go to far and kill me, and then there was the time I picked up something to kill him while he was passed out drunk. Obviously it was a crossroads in my life."

But it looks like he too has learned from a tough past:

Wagner's father eventually went to prison and he's only spoken once with his son once in the last 10 years. The younger Wagner went to a foster home and eventually landed at a dairy farm where he worked his way through high school in Elcho, Wisconsin. He played football and basketball at Elcho, and wound up at Michigan Tech, where he gained his degree in mechanical engineering.

Besides Sims, who's going to have to do a lot more than start a charity to convince me he won't continue to be one of the best heels in MMA, my money is on one of these two guys to emerge as the Chris Leben of the season: Matt Mitrione or Darrill Schoonover. Mitrione has already been seen in preview videos being threatened by Marcus Jones and talking smack about Kimbo Slice. I'm not expecting Jones to be the bad guy in that exchange because he's been so darn well-spoken in his interviews. Besides, Jones is older and had a decently successful NFL run so I'm expecting he'll be beyond the ordinary sort of foolishness.

The only clue I have about Schoonover is that there's already been discussion of him drinking rum and coke at 9am on the second day of filming in some of the Steve Cofield interviews with the cast. The utter paucity of publicity that Schoonover has received makes me doubt he'll be an anti-hero of the show but you never know.

So who will it be? Wes Sims, the proven heel? Mitrione, the smack-talker with the knack for getting into extra-curricular confrontations? Schoonover, the partier?

We'll start finding out tonight.

Oh yeah, some of them might be good mixed martial artists as well.