'TUF 24' prospect Matt Schnell wasn't keen on taking another reality TV road to the UFC

Matt Schnell had been down the reality TV road before. It wasn’t something that was on the top of his list for things to do again, necessarily.

But there’s a little saying about what to do when opportunity knocks, and Schnell was wise enough to know he needed to answer.

Schnell (10-2) is one of 16 flyweights who hold titles in promotions around the world who became the Season 24 cast of “The Ultimate Fighter.” But this season has a unique twist. The winner of the tournament will get a shot at long-reigning UFC champ Demetrious Johnson (24-2-1 MMA, 12-1-1 UFC) in December at the TUF 24 Finale.

That prospect was definitely enough to get Schnell, the current Legacy FC interim 125-pound titleholder, to sign up.

“To be honest, I would’ve rather gotten to the UFC organically rather than going through ‘The Ultimate Fighter,'” Schnell recently told MMAjunkie Radio. “But the opportunity came to me, and you don’t turn something like this down. It’s different than any other season has been with a title shot at the end. It was big – it was a big way to jump in and make noise early, which I thought I was capable of doing. We just ran with it.

“If the UFC would’ve called me and said, ‘Hey, do you want to do “The Ultimate Fighter” or do you want to just fight in the UFC?’ I’d have been like, ‘Yeah, I’ll just fight in the UFC.’ But it worked out the way it did, and I’m satisfied.”

Schnell was one of the stars of MTV’s reality series “Caged,” which aired nearly five years ago for 10 episodes inside the lives of yet-to-make-it-big MMA fighters in Minden, La.

After the show, Schnell did well for himself, primarily under the Legacy FC banner. In March, before “TUF 24” started taping with coaches Joseph Benavidez and Henry Cejudo in Las Vegas, he won his seventh straight fight with a first-round submission of Klayton Mai at Legacy FC 52. That gave him the interim title – and a measure of revenge over Mai, who had submitted him nearly two years earlier. (Check out the highlights of his rematch win over Mai in the video above. Below, watch Schnell take out Vanderlei Leite in just 19 seconds at Legacy FC 42.)

On “TUF 24,” Schnell won his fight against Ring of Combat champ Matt Rizzo with a triangle choke in the second round. That put him into the quarterfinals, where he’ll face Tim Elliott, the Titan FC champ.

Schnell said he hoped to work with Benavidez ahead of the show – in part because he was familiar with Cejudo thanks to them sharing a promotion. Cejudo twice fought for Legacy FC before signing with the UFC – both times at catchweights when he couldn’t hit the flyweight limit.

But Cejudo, an Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler, turned out to be a good experience, he said.

“I did my best to soak in everything that was happening around me,” Schnell said. “It was a good opportunity to mix it up with different guys. When you train with better guys and other people that are considered top prospects in the world, you kind of realize you belong among those guys. It was a great time. I learned a lot, and I was able to work with Henry (Cejudo) a lot, and it was an awesome experience to work with him.”

Regardless of what may come for Schnell on “TUF 24,” though, he might walk away away from the experience knowing the first reality TV shot he had helped him get to one level, and the second may help him get to the ultimate level.

“I’m out here trying to do the best I can to be a professional and move forward in this sport and continue my ascent,” Schnell said.

Catch new episodes of “The Ultimate Fighter 24: Tournament of Champions” every Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET (7 p.m. PT) on FS1. MMAjunkie recaps each episode of the reality series.

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