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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
The UFC will air preliminary card fights for Saturday's UFC 125 event after all.
The organization on Tuesday announced a new television deal with Ion Television that will bring three of the preliminary card fights from Saturday's card in Las Vegas to the network.
"I am excited for our fans because I've been looking for ways to broadcast UFC prelims free and to as many homes as possible," UFC president Dana White stated in today's release. "Ion is the largest broadcast television station group in the U.S., and this deal will put the UFC prelims in almost 100 million homes."
The three bouts that will air during the hour long broadcast are Marcus Davis vs. Jeremy Stephens, Josh Grispi vs. Dustin Poirier and Phil Baroni vs. Brad Tavares, and the broadcast begins at 8:55 PM ET.
The Baroni-Tavares bout is the beneficiary of an online campaign by fans to get that bout on television, and in an interview with MMAJunkie.com, White said he's rolling the dice with three fights as they can't possibly fit all three in the hour if they all go to decision.
"The prelims we do air, there's only supposed to be two," White said. "Time-wise, it's impossible to pull off three if they all go to the distance. I'm going to roll the dice on this thing. Not only are we going to bring the prelims to the fans, but everybody has been hammering me for the Phil Baroni-Brad Tavares fight, so I'm going to do three fights. I'm going to give them that fight, too."
This move technically counts as the UFC's debut on network television. It's not CBS, NBC, ABC or FOX, but Ion Television is still a network station. It was founded in 1998 as PAX TV, and rebranded as Ion Television in 2007.
Penick's Analysis: This is great, great news. It's a curious move to go ahead with a lesser known station like Ion, and they're looking into whether they will make this a regular, long term thing with the network, but for this event it's great that fans will be able to see the fights. In the Twin Cities in Minnesota, Ion is available right next to the major network stations, so for fans flipping through on Saturday or looking through their guide they'd see that a UFC was on. But what type of viewership and this brings remains to be seen. It's a risky move overall, but an exciting and welcome one at the same time. They're definitely going to be banking on a quick finish in the Grispi-Poirier fight, as I can see both of the other two bouts making it to the scorecards. Still, this means three free fights at the least for fans, and a better chance for more fights to be seen on Saturday altogether.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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