...OH, ONE MORE THING - PLEASE BOOKMARK US & VISIT DAILY!
By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
The new Fox Sports 1 network launches on August 17, with a live UFC event from Boston, Mass. ending the night with five hours of MMA action. UFC President Dana White has promised their best TV event ever, and they're expected to announce the main event for the card sometime this week.
White has said they are debating between four different fights to serve as the night's main event, one of which came together after Saturday's UFC 160 event in Las Vegas.
The fight in question is for the UFC Lightweight Championship, which will see Ben Henderson defend his title against T.J. Grant, who earned his shot with a first round knockout of Gray Maynard on the UFC 160 main card.
Grant has won five straight fights since dropping down to the lightweight division, and he's been winning those fights in increasingly impressive fashion. That finish earned Grant the respect of UFC President Dana White, who confirmed after the event that Grant had gotten himself in line for the fight against Henderson.
"There are four fights we're looking at right now for that show, and that's one of them," White said after the card Saturday (via MMAJunkie.com). "You notice when that fight started, Gray Maynard was not respecting him at all. He was walking right into him throwing bombs at him and ended up getting caught."
"For T.J. to knock him out the way he did, he earned it tonight. He just turned it on and has been wrecking everybody, literally wrecking everybody."
Penick's Analysis: With Ben Henderson's fights not performing on pay-per-view last year, the Lightweight Title's been turned into a bit of a television championship. This would be his third straight fight on free TV if it gets booked for the FS1 debut card, and he'll have gone from network TV to cable on that front. I think they might switch things up a bit as he's been on free TV a bunch recently, and they might want something different for the FS1 card, but we'll find out this week when they announce a fight. As for the Grant-Henderson matchup in particular, it's going to be a highly intriguing fight. Grant's striking has come along real well, and his power in particular is something that is going to be difficult for any fighter to deal with. That's a highly intriguing matchup, and regardless of where the fight takes place it will be a very interesting one.
(Attention MMATorch app users: Make sure to upgrade to the latest edition of the MMATorch app on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device!)
Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
STAFF COLUMNISTS: Shawn Ennis - Jason Amadi
Frank Hyden - Rich Hansen
Chris Park - Matt Pelkey
Interested in joining MMATorch's writing team? Send idea for a theme to your column (for Specialist section) or area of interest (i.e. TV Reporter) along with a sample of writing to mmatorch@gmail.com.
