Andy Wang is more than a meme

June 23, 2024

Looking back now, Andy Wang’s crimes on Season 5 of “The Ultimate Fighter” don’t seem all that bad.

They don’t seem like much of anything, honestly. Rewatch 2007’s TUF 5 through 2019 eyes and one thing that stands out — aside from the shiny shirts, baggy pants and the odd homophobic joke still inexplicably flying around — is that Wang’s performance was actually pretty low key.

Judging entirely by what exists on screen, you might not guess that Wang was once regarded as an example of what not to do on the UFC’s popular reality series. You might not remember that his appearance ranked up there with other unfortunate early TUF contestants like Jason Thacker (Season 1), Noah Inhofer (Season 3) and Jeremy Jackson (Season 4). You might not know that he got roundly savaged on message boards after it was over and went on to become one of the MMA’s original internet memes.

And frankly, if you only know Andy Wang from TUF 5, you really don’t know him at all.

“They really did him dirty,” said Mac Danzig, TUF 6 champion and Wang’s longtime training partner. “Andy is a person with a lot of integrity. I’m not exactly sure why, but for whatever reason, I really felt like they portrayed him poorly. It was kind of a mini-crusade of mine for a while to make sure people knew he wasn’t just some schlep.”

So, what were Wang’s great sins? What did he do to prompt a bunch of online trolls to reduce his 20 years in martial arts to a cruel joke, and briefly popularize the expression “stand and Wang” to mock his short turn on cable TV?

Wang didn’t follow a game plan. He said a couple of things he might now wish he could take back. Maybe the biggest mistake of all, circa 2007: He cried on national television.

That’s it. That’s all it took.

Perhaps more than anything else, that part of Wang’s story feels like a time capsule from MMA’s raucous adolescent years. Although we didn’t know it then, he appeared on The Ultimate Fighter during its golden era, just as the show crested a wave of relevance inside the sport’s hyper-niche bubble.

In retrospect, TUF 5’s cast was shockingly star-studded. Future UFC regulars Nate Diaz, Gray Maynard, Joe Lauzon, Manny Gamburyan, Matt Wiman, Cole Miller and Corey Hill all got their first national exposure there. Even that season’s bitter feud between coaches B.J. Penn and Jens Pulver feels somewhat rarified now. Then there were guys such as Wang, Gabe Ruediger, Wayne Weems and Marlon Sims, whom TUF’s editors deftly sorted into a different, less flattering pile.

A dozen years later, TUF 5 reads like a master class in how the UFC structured its reality TV. The format was still relatively fresh, the pranks mild and the in-house beefs downright quaint compared to what would come during the upcoming 23 seasons.

Wang went on TUF back when it still mattered, when the show — no matter how artificial or purposefully edited it feels today — could still make you.

Or break you.

He isn’t going to point fingers.

That’s one thing you learn when you start asking Wang about TUF 5. At 41, he mostly still blames himself for the way things turned out. Even if, with the benefit of 12 years of hindsight, that doesn’t seem fair. Even if it feels like he’s being too hard on himself.

“I put everything I had into training and competing on that season,” Wang said, reached by The Athletic via Facebook from his home in Beijing. “I definitely overreacted, but at that time, MMA was everything to me, and it was my life.”

It took Wang some time to distinguish himself from the TUF 5 crowd. When Pulver selected slugger Brandon Melendez to fight Team Penn’s Wang on Episode 4, it amounted to his first significant screen time of the season. The first clue for how Wang was about to be treated was the episode’s title: “Waa, Waa.”

At 29, he was already old for an Ultimate Fighter contestant. He came into the show with a 5-6 pro record and, at a stocky 5-foot-6, seems undersized for 155 pounds by today’s standards. This was years before the UFC added men’s featherweight, bantamweight and flyweight divisions. Back in 2007 the company was still restocking its lightweight class after abandoning it in the early 2000s.

By comparison Melendez was 23 and cutting down from welterweight. He was 18-12 overall and riding a six-fight winning streak. Wang’s Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt prompted Team Penn coaches to urge him to get Melendez to the ground. But Wang didn’t heed that advice.

Melendez knocked him down with a stiff left 15 seconds into their two-round exhibition bout. Maybe after that, Wang got lost in the moment. He did ultimately force the action against the fence twice during the second round but spent nearly all the fight trying to hang with Melendez on the feet. As Penn repeatedly and loudly implored him to get a takedown, Wang kept swinging, finally losing a unanimous decision to Melendez.

And that’s where the reality TV dream machine kicked into high gear.

After the fight the camera lingered on Wang crying in his corner for a long time. Like, a weirdly, uncomfortably long time. Intercut with scenes of him weeping was interview footage of Penn mercilessly mocking his cries. Penn called Wang’s unwillingness to follow the game plan a “lie” and said it was “a waste of time” trying to coach him.

UFC President Dana White gave an exasperated recap. A montage showed cast members mystified by his approach. Team Penn’s Alan Berube quipped he was “disgusted” by it. Even Melendez said he thought Wang should have taken him down.

Wang himself pounded the final nail in. During a post-fight debrief with TUF cameras, he uttered the quote that likely sealed his future ignominy: “I’m disappointed that I lost, but I don’t feel like a loser, honestly,” he said. “I feel like, people, when they see Andy Wang, they don’t say, oh, he’s a punk. They say, hey man, there’s warrior.”

Things only got stranger from there. By Episode 7, Penn had lost five of the season’s first six fights, and during a private meeting, White urged him to “be the general” and “get control” of his slumping fighters.

Penn responded by kicking Wang off his team.

This, to put it mildly, was a bizarre turn. White, whose role at the time was basically to periodically show up at the TUF gym and be flabbergasted by some new problem, was flabbergasted. Pulver agreed to take Wang onto his team, but White got even more flabbergasted when Wang initially refused. Wang said he wanted to honor his commitment to Penn’s team, even if Penn didn’t want him anymore.

“I’m starting to see why B.J. was so pissed,” White quipped. “Now I want to fucking kill Andy Wang.”

In one of the most telling exchanges of the weird subplot, Pulver’s team unanimously and immediately agreed to accept Wang. He completed the rest of the season in low-profile fashion. Near the end he even helped Melendez make weight for his next fight. At the show’s live finale, Wang got another tough draw in Cole Miller, who knocked him out in the first round and went on to fight 19 more times in the octagon.

For Wang, it was the sum total of his UFC career.

So, to recap, the things Wang did to earn himself as much hate as any other early TUF cast member were: fail to heed his coaches’ strategy while taking a much larger, more experienced fighter to a unanimous but otherwise unremarkable decision loss. Then, let his emotions get the better of him in the cage. Then, felt conflicted about abandoning his team.

Then, it was over. As far as most fans were concerned, that was the end of Wang’s story, right there.

Except, Wang didn’t just fade out. He kept going. For him, the credits didn’t roll.

“I don’t feel bad about overreacting; I feel bad about doing it publicly,” he said. “Truth is, if you’ve accomplished something significant — like winning a title — then tears make sense. I did not get anywhere close to that. I should have gone back to the house and kept my emotions and mouth closed.”

A few more things most people don’t know about Wang: He’s a teacher. Like, a real, actual school teacher. He has degrees in history and political science from University of Hawaii at Manoa. Originally from Taiwan, his parents moved to the U.S. when he was just a baby. He’s a legit BJJ black belt under Egan Inoue, and coached and trained extensively in Hawaii and Southern California, earning a reputation as a loyal and steadfast partner.

“This guy,” Danzig said, “he used to do substitute teaching work at high schools and junior highs throughout LA, and then he would drive through the rush hour traffic on his motorcycle, show up with his shirt and tie on, and walk right in, not even warm up, just get his gloves on and start sparring to help whoever needed a fight. He was always there.”

Danzig said he met Wang in 2002 while training at Rico Chiapparelli’s Real American Wrestling team. The two up-and-coming lightweights were “real competitive with each other, but in a good way,” Danzig said, and eventually became friends. Danzig remembered Wang as the sort of training partner who was always there when he needed him, who didn’t gossip or talk behind your back or make promises he couldn’t keep. Danzig said Wang once came to train with him on Christmas Day, not because Wang had a fight coming up, but because Danzig did.

Strangely enough, Danzig probably wouldn’t have done TUF 6 at all, if not for Wang.

Turns out, even as The Ultimate Fighter chewed Wang up and spit him out, he put in a good word for Danzig with producers. Even still, when casting directors for Season 6 got in contact with Danzig, he wasn’t sure he wanted to do it. He was coming off a loss to Hayato Sakurai in Pride Fighting Championships and “didn’t know what to do with himself.”

So, Wang talked him into it.

“He wanted me to have that opportunity,” Danzig said. “We were both fighting in small organizations, making peanuts and not really getting any exposure. I was locked into this contract from King of the Cage for a long time, and they wouldn’t let me compete in any other organizations. So, once I was out of that, (Andy) was just like, man, this is your opportunity to go and do it, you know?”

Danzig had his own issues with how he was portrayed on the show, but he ended up defeating Tommy Spear to win the TUF 6 contract and kick off his own 12-fight UFC career.

Matt Hughes congratulates team member Mac Danzig for winning “The Ultimate Fighter 6” in 2007. (Denise Truscello / WireImage)

For Wang’s part he returned to teaching and coaching jiu-jitsu in Los Angeles. He fought in the U.S. until 2011, going 2-1 before taking an extended break from competition while moving to China in 2012.

He said he didn’t have time to dwell much on his Ultimate Fighter experience.

“Of course, it’s no fun to take criticism,” Wang said, “especially if it is something you love to do. (But) I was right back to teaching high school, so that kept me busy and away from spending too much time on the negative comments. It stings to get random messages that are super critical, but looking back on it now … the UFC gave me another opportunity to redeem myself against Cole Miller, and I didn’t come through, so I have to be able to take (the) flak.”

The last thing to know about Wang? He seems generally happy today, though it sounds like he’s getting the itch to move his family back to America.

When he moved to Beijing to help a friend launch an MMA clothing line, Wang said he figured he’d be there about a year. He’d just wrapped up a coaching camp for India’s Super Fight League and said he was excited to explore more aspects of Asian martial arts. Both his parents were born in China, and he wanted to connect with his ancestry.

Seven years later, he’s still there, and said China’s rapidly evolving MMA scene is a big reason why. For much of that time, Wang coached and competed in BJJ in Beijing. He also referees MMA fights when he gets the chance. It’s exciting for China to suddenly have its first UFC champion in Weili Zhang, he said, but cautioned that sports don’t play the same role in daily life there as in America.

“China is a classical society and, speaking as a school teacher here, from an early age kids are going to school from morning to night with the focus on academic studies,” Wang said. “There’s no 24-hour sports station like ESPN here, as far as I know. … MMA is definitely still a niche sport here, but of course we are all hoping to change that and get more people interested in the benefits of training.”

He recently got married and has a toddler. Now that he has a family, Wang is focusing more on teaching school and being a parent than martial arts. He coaches youth flag football. He said kids in China are a lot like kids in America — and was initially surprised how many high schoolers there listen to Eminem and Tupac — but the school atmosphere is much different.

“I’m teaching at a school here that uses textbooks from the United States,” he said. “While flipping through the history books, I noticed certain pages were blocked with tape. It’s shocking to see censorship, and (it) feels strange. We peeled off the tape a bit to see what was censored, and it was about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It’s those moments, even though America has and always will have its struggles and problems, that I appreciate the freedoms Americans have.”

Sometimes his internet access is limited, but Wang keeps in touch with family and friends through Facebook. Danzig said they still talk, though less frequently than before Wang moved. These days their topics of conversation run mostly to fatherhood, though Danzig said Wang was excited when Danzig finally ditched LA to open his own MMA gym in Bend, Ore.

Because of that limited internet access, it takes a few weeks to conduct a 10-question interview with Wang. Yet, he doggedly returned to answering all of The Athletic’s questions, bringing a determination to the process you rarely see from a former fighter.

Wang said there’s a conversation he had with Penn during TUF 5 that he still thinks about today. Essentially, Penn warned that he needed to control his emotions in the cage. Years later Wang conceded Penn was right. Call it his one regret about how everything played out.

“He told me I had the ability, but if I didn’t control my emotions before, during and after a match, I would be remembered as a mediocre fighter — and that’s pretty much exactly what happened,” Wang said. “At the time I thought I needed better or more training or experience, but looking back it at it now, MMA — like any career — requires a lot mentally, physically and emotionally to succeed.”

Wang returned to the cage for a one-night tournament in China during the summer of 2017. He went 1-1 that night — which he said will be his last — and ended with a career mark of 8-9-1. Not hall of fame numbers, but also not exactly the laughingstock he was made out to be after TUF.

He said he loves to see Nate Diaz carrying the banner for their season but recognizes why people reacted so negatively to his own showing on the series.

“I understand,” he said. “I overreacted and under-performed with a great opportunity. It’s something I can’t change now, but hopefully it’s something I can use to help students to learn from my mistakes and be better for it.”

(Top photo of Cole Miller and Andy Wang: Josh Hedges / Zuffa)

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