I guess we got some fights in Alaska tonight. Those wacky Alaskans and their random Wednesday cards. This week the UFC has a rare Friday fight night, letting Bellator try to compete with college football.
Wednesday
11pm - (Fightpass) - AFC 133
This event is not listed at all on tapology or Sherdog. So, I assume this card is bad and the only thing going for it is there's literally nothing else anywhere in the world.
Friday
7pm TV - (6:30 pm Fightpass/7pm FXX) - UFC Fight Night, OSP vs Okami
This is bad by UFC standards. The main event was going to be cool but with the late replacement now it'll be a one-sided beatdown. Basically a few decent fighters from this side of the world, a couple legit asian fighters, and then the rest of the card is filled out with whatever they could scrape up from Asia.
Saturday
8pm TV - (5:30 pm internet/8pm Spike) - Bellator 183, Henderson vs. Pitbull
Bellator is usually somewhere between joke, freakshow, and/or filler but this card is one of the few times of the year where they seem to be trying to put together a real UFC-level fight card. Some of the best (or more popular, if not actually "good") fighters on their roster are on this one, its excellent by Bellator standards. [Reply]
One of the fights on the main card fell out because one of the japanese fighters showed up to the scale severely dehydrated and obviously in no shape to fight. (he still missed weight by 4 pounds)
So... when I saw that the main event didn't have any big names, I assumed this would be a random below-average Bellator card. Then I pulled up tapology, looked at rankings and records, and this is actually decent. This would be a bad UFC card, but by Bellator standards its actually pretty good. If you have nothing else to do, maybe you should tune in, this looks like an impressive little Bellator card.
Saturday
7pm TV - (5:15 pm Fightpass/7pm FS1/9pm PPV) - UFC 217, Ferguson vs Lee
This is a VERY good PPV. Its not going to sell worth a shit because this is a big college football weekend and the 2 title fights have no big famous names that were ever heard of among casual fans, but among hard-core fight fans there are A LOT of sweet fights to watch here. 4 out of the 5 fights on the PPV are great and interesting. All 4 of the FS1 prelims are good and important for their respective divisions, and the online fightpass prelims have a couple really cool fights. It is really a shame that this event will not get the respect it deserves, but I've arranged a little BBQ UFC party with family and friends for these fights, this is on paper going to be one of the best cool cage-fighting events this year that almost nobody outside of hard core UFC fans watch.
Sunday
midnight - (Fightpass) - Pancrase 290
It is what it is. There's not much talent here, and its in the middle of the night, but if you are awake, you may as well watch. To put into perspective just how terrible the talent is here, we do not have ANY of the top 25 Japanese fighters in ANY weight division on this card. These guys are all chasing a dream they will not attain. On the plus side, there's no delay for commercials, they shuttle fighters in and out of the cage really fast and the fight card has a ton of fights with no one you've heard of.
noon - (Fightpass) - EFN 76
This card is weird. Most of this card is fucking terrible even by local promotion standards, BUT the last 2 fights are actually interesting. There's a couple former UFC fighters trying to fight their way back into the show, but before the last two fights we've got a lot of random bums. [Reply]
I see that the UFC added some random W125 bout between 2 prospects I've never heard of before to the PPV. OK, fine its not replacing anything, we went from 12 bouts to 13. [Reply]
Weigh-ins going on now, everyone on the main card has weighed in except Kevin Lee, who reportedly is facing a massive 19 lb weight cut. So the main event could be in trouble. [Reply]
Nik Lentz is out, he had medical issues with his weight cut and the bout is cancelled. We're only waiting on Kevin Lee now, he's the only fighter who has not yet weighed in with 15 minutes remaining. [Reply]
Kevin Lee weighed in at 156 and missed weight. The NAC then announced that they will give him another hour if a doctor examines him and approves the extra pound cut.
edit: I'm sure this will come as a shock to everyone, but the Nevada doctor has cleared Lee to cut one more pound [Reply]
Werdum vs Lewis is cancelled. Lewis was reportedly battling back issues all week and tried to fight through it, but they just now decided to pull the fight.