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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
The UFC makes a landmark move forward on November 12, bringing the Heavyweight Championship bout between Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos to network television on Fox. However, current television partner Spike TV is going to attempt to make things a little murky for fight fans that night, airing a three-hour marathon of "UFC Unleashed" episodes featuring Velasquez and dos Santos to counter program the Fox broadcast.
Spike announced the plans for that night, as well as their name for the three hour marathon in "Dos Santos vs Velasquez: Unleashed for the Heavyweight Title".
The first hour of unleashed features dos Santos' victory over Shane Carwin from UFC 131, as well as Velasquez's title winning performance over Brock Lesnar. That first hour goes head to head with the hour long Fox broadcast that night beginning at 9PM ET. Following that, the other episodes feature dos Santos' win over Mirko Cro Cop, and Velasquez's knockout of Antonio "Minotauro" Nogueira.
Prior to that, Bellator will be live on MTV2 from 7-9PM ET.
The move isn't surprising, and follows up on a counter-programming Nate Marquardt marathon Spike put on the night of UFC on Versus 4, where Marquardt was supposed to meet Rick Story. With Spike also airing Bellator programming on Spike.com and wanting to bring the other MMA promotion to their network as soon as possible, UFC President Dana White last week said he didn't feel Spike was honoring their deal.
"If you really look at what I call the spirit of the deal... it's the wrong thing to do [to air Bellator prelims on Spike.com].” White told Ariel Helwani last week (transcribed by Zach Arnold at FightOpinion.com). "In my opinion, it's Spike not being honorable. I've been nothing but honorable with them. That is not the spirit of the deal and they're being 100% not honorable."
Bellator cannot be moved to Spike while they still own the rights to the UFC library, so with the UFC not interested in buying the library back for 2012, Bellator cannot be moved until 2013 at the earliest.
The UFC's live debut on Fox will air from the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif.
Penick's Analysis: Well, White was already not feeling very happy about Spike at the end of this deal, and this isn't going to help that feeling. Still, Spike's got the material, they're going to try to bring casual UFC viewers to their network that perhaps aren't entirely aware of the UFC's Fox debut. With the push the fight is getting on other Fox programming, including every game during the NFL's Sunday slot on the network, the awareness should hopefully be there for something like this to not have a massive effect on the live viewership of the Fox debut.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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