This card looks about average by local promotion standards
8pm - (Paramount and DAZN) - Bellator 219, Awad vs. Girtz
Just like the UFC lately, Bellator comes at us with a top-heavy card. Maybe they know we will be watching basketball early on and are only hoping we'll switch for the main event. Anyway, thats a good plan because before the main event this card is awful by Bellator's standards, but the main event is pretty good. The main event should walk around 9:30pm.
Saturday
4pm TV - (2:30pm ESPN+/4pm ESPN) - UFC Fight Night on ESPN, Barboza vs. Gaethje
The last couple weeks have had top-heavy cards and this is no exception, but we do have 1 maybe 2 interesting fights on the early prelims. Not much in the prelims, but the last 4 fights on the main card are interesting. The main event is obviously fantastic for cable TV.
11:30pm - (Internet and OneFC App) - ONE Championship: A New Era
So, why am I posting a OneFC Card? They've had fights in prior weeks, and no one really cared. I don't care about the prelims for this one either, or really even their last 3 fights. It is because this event is the OneFC debut for both Eddie Alvarez and Demetrious "Mighty Mouse" Johnson, live from Tokyo. The main card starts bright and early about 4am or so on Sunday morning, and their fights will probably start about 5am or so. If you don't want to wake up, I'm sure you can find a replay somewhere on the internet Sunday. If you do want to wake up, we do know the event is available free in North America on the OneFC app, and there may also be a couple websites simulcasting it.
Tonight it seemed like the fighters were having their gloves, and sometimes their wrapping, cut off immediately after the fight, before the decision was announced.
Does anyone know why? Is it because of ESPN or the Pennsylvania state athletic commission, or whatever state agency oversees the fights? Or a new UFC thing for some reason?
lol, Eddie Alvarez got knocked out by some random Russian in the 1st round.
Mighty Mouse's Japanese opponent in his OneFC debut did OK in the first round, but got mauled by DJ in the 2nd before getting choked out.
edit: before you ask, apparently in OneFC they dont believe in any of those grounded opponent rules, you can knee someone in the head while they are down.
Ruslan Magomedov is the first UFC fighter to get hit with a lifetime ban by USADA. His 3rd failure occurred a couple months ago when he refused to provide a sample.
There is no UFC or Bellator this weekend (no PFL till later this year), but it feels like just about every B-league promotion in North America is rushing in to fill the gap on fightpass and flocombat, starting tonight. (I don't usually list flocombat cards but there's a lot of them this weekend).
Thursday
8pm - (Fightpass) - XFN 357
This card is not on tapology (which is a bad sign), so I have no idea how good these fighters are. Probably not very.
10pm - (Fightpass) - M-1 Global - USA, Battle in the Desert
M-1 is Russia's top MMA promotion, and tapology rankings suggest that they do have some decent local talent. They are below Bellator, but not that much below. With this card, they are still trying to expand into the US, but of course our MMA local promotion scene is already saturated.
Friday
9pm - (Fightpass) - Muay Thai
Saturday
2pm - (Fightpass) - Muay Thai Grand Prix 24
As far as this sport goes, this event seems bigger than usual.
1am - (Fightpass) - Quintet Fight Night 3
This event is fun to watch, but unfortunately its in Japan so its in the middle of the night. (It is a 5 v 5 grappling tournament with teams going at it king of the mountain style one at a time vs the winner until one team's grapplers all lose.) [Reply]
The PFL has just announced their 2019 rosters and schedule. Regular season will be in 6 events on May through August before the cut down to the playoffs, with each fighter getting 2 regular season matches. Playoffs on 3 events in October, Championships on New Years Eve. All 6 regular season cards will be ESPN2 for 2 hours and ESPN+ for 3 hours.
Now we know what Dillashaw popped for and why he immediately vacated the bantamweight belt. He tested positive for injected EPO, and is suspended for 2 years.
Apparently they caught him because of a new test that was developed, it used to be very hard to catch people for injectable EPO, but this new test makes it a lot easier. They went back and tested an old sample from Dillashaw and that popped too, so Dillashaw has been cheating for a long time. [Reply]
Valentina Shevchenko went back home to Kyrgyzstan and the reaction she received was just absolutely bonkers. Her twitter feed the last few days is worth marvelling at.
Now that basketball is over, the UFC is back with a really good PPV.
Saturday
7pm TV - (5:15pm Fightpass/7pm ESPN/9pm PPV) - UFC 236: Holloway vs Poirier 2
This isn't complicated, look at the PPV card. If you are a UFC fan, this is one of the PPV's you'll watch this year. The prelims are a bit light (but I've seen worse), but every fight on the PPV is very good. The only thing that makes it tricky is that this is the first PPV that can only be bought on ESPN+, but it isn't that hard. If you can't figure it out in this day and age of streaming, well then I'm sorry but you are just an idiot.
2am - (Fightpass) - Pancrase 304
Its Pancrase, so its probably not good, and its on in the middle of the night. [Reply]