Gonna have to wake up early Saturday if you want to see Cowboy.
Thursday
8pm TV - (5pm Facebook/8pm NBC SN) - PFL 2: 2018 Regular Season
Saturday
3:30am - (Fightpass) - UFC Fight Night, Cowboy vs. Edwards
This event is not on TV, and the prelims start in the middle of the night from Singapore on Friday night/Saturday morning. Main card starts at 7am, and Cowboy will probably walk out at around 8:30. So, it might be worth it to wake up in the morning for this, but there's no reason to watch any of the prelims at all, they are all local fighters who I never heard of, and more than likely all but a couple of them will be cut after this weekend.
Sunday
7pm - (Fightpass) - EBI 16
Submission-only no-gi jiu-jitsu tournament with no scoring and no judges. The Eddie Bravo Invitational is a fun little grappling event.
Tuesday
7pm - (Fightpass) - Dana White's Tuesday Night Contender Series [Reply]
This probably won't come as a shock to anyone, but Gastelum says Dana White lied about the UFC relying on him to be the back-up plan for Romero.
He was willing to stay ready in case they needed him, but he wasn't going to diet and train for free, he wanted money to be the backup plan, and the UFC wanted him to stay ready for free. So Gastelum told the UFC he wasn't going to stay ready if they weren't going to pay, and he went to Cancun. The UFC called him Wednesday night because they were worried Romero wouldn't make weight, but Gastelum was about 205 at that point, and couldn't cut that much weight in 1.5 days. [Reply]
The UFC is going dark this weekend before international fight week. (If UFC 226 survives the weigh-in, then I'll probably post a separate thread on that day) This weekend belongs to Bellator and a couple random fightpass cards.
Friday
6pm - (Fightpass) - Titan FC 50
Based on tapology, this looks about average by local promotion standards.
8pm TV - (Paramount) - Bellator 201, Macfarlane vs. Lara
Judging by tapology rankings, this card is roughly average.... or maybe a bit below average by Bellator standards, with the night capped off with the W125 Bellator championship.
Saturday
midnight - (Fightpass) - Pancrase 297
I don't want to shit on Pancrase, but I'm afraid that once again I have to do it. This is an awful card even by low-level promotion standards. There is no good reason to watch this pile of shit unless you just can't sleep and are bored. [Reply]
Al Iaquinta is out on the main event in Lincoln, he did not want to fight Gaethje unless he was paid more money.
The UFC has replaced him with James Vick, which honestly.... thats a better fight. This is on paper an upgrade for the fans, so if you were thinking about buying tickets for Gaethje vs Iaquinta, you should definitely keep your plans for Gaethje vs Vick. [Reply]
Originally Posted by alnorth:
Al Iaquinta is out on the main event in Lincoln, he did not want to fight Gaethje unless he was paid more money.
The UFC has replaced him with James Vick, which honestly.... thats a better fight. This is on paper an upgrade for the fans, so if you were thinking about buying tickets for Gaethje vs Iaquinta, you should definitely keep your plans for Gaethje vs Vick.
Iaquinta is not doing himself any favors here. He only fights once every couple of years and he just had a great showing against Khabib. He could have capitalized on some momentum and gotten some run. [Reply]
This is a bit of a major surprise, and I'm not a labor lawyer so I don't know where this goes from here, but Leslie Smith won in her complaint with the NLRB against the UFC. I assume the UFC will appeal to the national NLRB board, or to court, or both.
If after whatever happens from here all the various boards and courts eventually say that its final that UFC fighters are employees, then its hard to say what that'll mean for the sport of MMA, but that would be very, very bad for WME. [Reply]