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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
"Every fan that wanted to see the prelims should be doing Diego Sanchez 'Yes Cartwheels' down the street right now. We got it on free TV... I go out, and I make this deal, and the fans are like, 'What's an ION? They don't have HD!' Too [expletive] bad. I got it done. They're on TV. They're available in over 100 million homes. I got you the prelims.
Some people are saying, 'I don't have ION.' You can get ION with rabbit ears. It's a broadcast network. Everybody gets it. Everybody gets this channel. Get a pair of the old rabbit ears out, and you'll pick it up. You don't need cable TV to get this.
Spike TV was offered these. They can't take them. They're not taking them. We have a deal for 'X' amount of prelim fights. There's always gaps. It's never been where every prelim for every fight was shown on Spike. It never was. [The UFC 124 prelims] we put on the Internet. People were chirping, 'I can't watch them on the Internet.' We got it done with a broadcast partner. I said, 'How do we get this thing on television?' You're not going to put it on NBC or CBS with the prelims on there. We took a shot. We called these guys and started working with them. They were awesome. They were into it...
I got the prelims on, and we're putting three fights on. The production guys are ready to blow a fuse. If all three of those fights go the distance, it doesn't work – we're over the time – but we're going to go for it. We like trying new things. We'll see how this works out. Either I look like a hero or a zero on Saturday night."
-UFC President Dana White talks to MMAJunkie.com and defends the TV deal with Ion Television to air preliminary card fights for UFC 125 on Saturday night.
Penick's Analysis: I'm in the camp that is just happy that there are three fights being made available for free on Saturday night. On such short notice this is really a no-lose situation for the UFC. If they get crap ratings on Ion, well, they still made the fights available and they had very little time to make fans aware of the broadcast. If they draw good numbers, they have options for TV moving forward. The fights will be available for those that want to find them, and if this doesn't work out ratings-wise the UFC likely makes it a one and done deal. But these fights will be broadcast and available on free television, and the bottom line is that's a good thing.
[Dana White art by Travis Beaven (c) MMATorch.com]
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
STAFF COLUMNISTS: Shawn Ennis - Jason Amadi
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Chris Park - Matt Pelkey
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