Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted February 20, 2025 Paid Members Posted February 20, 2025 (edited) We’re back in Vegas. Is it just me or does it feel like these fights were just announced and they’re nearly upon us already? PPV MAIN CARD Alex Pereira©️vs Magomed Ankalaev - Light Heavyweight Title Justin Gaethje vs Rafael Fiziev Jalin Turner vs Ignacio Bahamondes Amanda Lemos vs Iasmin Lucindo King Green vs Mauricio Ruffy ESPN PRELIMS Joshua Van vs Rei Tsuruya Brunno Ferreira vs Armen Petrosyan Alex Morono vs Carlos Leal Mairon Santos vs Francis Marshall ESPN+/FIGHT PASS PRELIMS Ozzy Diaz vs Djorden Santos Good stuff. It’s not mega deep but I really like this card. Goes without saying this is way, way better than 312. Big fan of the main and co-main, for different reasons. But there’s also some genuine quality lower down the card which you don’t always get on PPVs these days unfortunately. Turner vs Bahamondes, Green vs Ruffy and Van vs Tsuruya in particular stand out to me. Hopefully everything stays intact. It’s only 2 weeks away! Alex Pereira vs Magomed Ankalaev tops the bill, for all the marbles at 205. It’s a fight that’s been on the cards for a while but kept getting delayed for one reason or another. I’m not Ankalaev’s biggest fan, find him pretty dull to watch most of the time, but there’s no question that he deserves this title shot. It’s not like the Light Heavyweight division is stacked with interesting challengers as it is, and the ones that were there, Pereira’s already beat them, some twice. I’ve seen all kinds of arguments from Pereira fans about giving the title shot to someone else, basically anyone but Ankalaev, but it’s bollocks. He’s next in line. He’s ranked #1, think he’s been #1 for a while as well, and out of the Top 5 he’s the only guy who’s a fresh fight for Pereira and coming off a win. You can not like his fighting style all you like but passing him over for a title shot again now would be taking the absolute piss. Alex Pereira’s still riding that wave of momentum. One of the most exciting fighters in the game and probably the most popular star the UFC has right now. He’ll be 38 in July, it’s not gonna last forever. But for now, he’s not showing any real signs of slowing down. He’s actually coming into this fight off a little break. Finally, they let this fucker sleep. He fought three times in six months in 2024, so a bit of time out was probably much needed. As much as fans love him taking those quick turnaround fights and keep jumping in on short notice and ‘saving cards’, you can’t keep doing that and expecting it not to backfire somewhere down the road. I’m glad he took a little bit of time off and at least got to have a Christmas. We last saw him butchering Khalil Rountree at UFC 307 in October. It was a booking that initially drew a little bit of criticism because Rountree was ranked #8 going in. It should’ve been Ankalaev back then, to be honest. But I didn’t have a major issue with it. It was always gonna be a fun fight for however long it lasted and they didn’t disappoint. Rountree gave a great account of himself in a losing effort, really fought his arse off and Pereira had to be more patient, it took him until the fourth round to put Rountree away. That win capped off an incredible 2024 for Pereira coming off the heels of making a meme out of Jamahal Hill at UFC 300 in April and then knocking out Jiri Prochazka again in their rematch in June. He had quite a year. The only possible negative spin you could put on it would be that he wasn’t fighting the top contender in Ankalaev. Not saying he was ducking him. This isn’t a Jones/Aspinall situation. But for whatever reason, it just kept getting pushed back and other guys got the shot ahead of him. Now it’s finally happening. Like I said, Ankalaev’s not a favourite of mine. Aside from the odd exception, I’ve found him mostly pretty boring to watch. But fair’s fair. You can’t just keep denying him his shot. He’s 19-1-1-1 now and coming off a couple of wins over Johnny Walker and Aleksandar Rakic. OK, not wins that scream nailed on top contender but, as I said above, who else is more deserving right now? He’s the #1 ranked guy and in the Top 5 it’s only him and Jiri even coming off wins. And Jiri’s already 0-2 down against Pereira. The clamouring for basically anyone to get the shot other than Ankalaev is probably mostly coming from that section of the fanbase whose whole personality/gimmick seems to be hating Dagestani fighters. The Dagestani thing in MMA is quite odd in general actually. There are fans who full on dickride any fighter from Dagestan and fans who hate them. It’s fucking tiresome either way if you’re just a fan somewhere in the middle who doesn’t base your like or dislike of a fighter on where they’re from. But yeah, Ankalaev’s a weird one. I remember predicting he’d become champ a couple of times in that ‘MMA Champions’ thread we’ve got on here but it never happened and I lost confidence in him. It wasn’t even that I particularly rated him too highly, it was more the state the division was in at the time, especially before Pereira moved up and injected a bit of life into it. Ankalaev did fight for the vacant title in 2022 against Jan Blachowicz, but that ended in a draw. So this is his second crack at it. Hopefully we can put this shit to bed one way or another. Yeah, I don’t really know what to expect here but I’m interested to see it play out. It could be over in a round and Pereira just chins him. Or Ankalaev could potentially drag him into a snoozer. Or maybe they have a crazy battle. Fuck knows? Ankalaev’s a bit of a goof. I see a lot of people predicting he’ll simply outwrestle Pereira here but, from what I remember, I don’t recall Ankalaev doing a lot of wrestling in previous fights. I think a lot of people are just seeing he’s from Dagestan and assuming he’s some imposing grappler but I’m not sure that’s the case at all. Still, he should have the advantage there over Pereira. But he’s enough of a meathead that I can see him just trying to stand up and that could end in tears for him. I’m not sure how it goes. I definitely think it’s a winnable one for Pereira. The resistance to give Ankalaev the shot was always weird to me. All I’d read from Pereira fans was about how Ankalaev’s shite and stuff but if that’s the case why were they pushing so hard for him not to get the shot? If it’s easy work for Pereira, surely you’d want it? Just to shut Ankalaev up if nothing else. It does have the feel of being a potential banana skin and I think that’s secretly what Pereira fans fear but don’t want to admit. It’s not like Pereira’s without flaws and he’s getting up in age now. Ankalaev’s the younger man at 32 and he does have some power if he connects. It all depends how Ankalaev approaches this one for me. I might have to give some of his past fights another look to see how his wrestling is because I’m hazy. If it’s even just decent though, you have to think he could potentially make this a very difficult night for Pereira. But again, Ankalaev’s a gonk and even if he does have a big edge in the wrestling, there’s every chance he just plods forward like Herman Munster straight into a Pereira left hook of doom. Hopefully Pereira gets it done. The LHW division is bad enough as it is, last thing we need is an Ankalaev title reign. Justin Gaethje vs Rafael Fiziev 2 then. Change of plan. This is the new 3 round co-main event. Obviously this was supposed to be Gaethje against Dan Hooker in a 5 rounder. I think we were all buzzing for that one so it was gutting to see the breaking news that Hooker had been forced out due to a hand injury just a couple of weeks out from the fight. To be honest, I’d have preferred if they just held off and tried to rebook the Hooker fight for a later date. I don’t want that one getting away and Hooker’s saying he’s looking at a June return. I guess Gaethje didn’t wanna wait though and you can’t blame him considering he’ll have spent money and time on the training camp for this. Plus the UFC these days don’t stack undercards up enough to really be able to just eat the loss of a big fight like that. They pretty much have to try to save fights now. As replacements go, this is one I never really saw coming but it’s a good one given the short notice they had to work with. They fought back in March 2023 at UFC 286 in London. I’m definitely gonna be revisiting that fight and doing a little review in here. I remember it being a cracker but my memory’s a tad hazy now so it’ll be good to watch it back to refresh the memory. Gaethje won on points that night in a bit of a war as I recall. Gaethje was coming off the loss to Charles Oliveira at the time and Fiziev was being talked about as potentially the next big thing at 155. He was on a 6 fight winning streak and had just knocked out Rafael Dos Anjos in his previous fight. So going in, I remember a lot of people kind of counting Gaethje out. I think I was favouring Fiziev myself back then. Gaethje proved he still had plenty left in the tank though. That’s how Fiziev looked at the end of it. He took some proper damage. Gaethje definitely won. Although I do think the state of Fiziev’s face there has kind of made some people remember the fight as more of a one-sided arse kicking than it actually was. Like I said, I’ll rewatch it during fight week and see what’s what but I remember it being a really competitive fight and Fiziev certainly had his moments. Gaethje just ended up outlasting him and taking over down the stretch, if my memory is correct. After that, Fiziev’s next fight was against Mateusz Gamrot in the September and it ended in the second round when Fiziev blew his knee out. Really unfortunate and he’s been out of action for about 18 months since. So yeah, him just randomly popping up now to step in on short notice here wasn’t the way I saw his return happening. But he must fancy it. I’m sure I read something before all this, that he was ready to go again and looking to get back in there so I’m guessing he’d been training anyway and feeling good in the gym and just jumped on this opportunity when it opened up. There’s surely no way you’re coming off a layoff like that and just diving into a scrap with Gaethje on 2 weeks notice unless you’re ready. It’ll be interesting to see how he looks. A fair bit of his game was centred around kicking so we’ll see if the knee injury effects any of that. I feel bad using this as the picture of Gaethje but it’s literally how we last saw him. Face down, out cold after Max Holloway sparked him in the last second of the last round of their BMF title fight at UFC 300. Insane finish, just a shame Gaethje was on the wrong end of it. There wasn’t much positive he could even take from that fight at all. I think he lost 3 of the 4 rounds going into that last round, then he got knocked out in spectacular fashion. Literally the only little moral victory he could’ve taken from that fight would be that he was the first man to knock Holloway down…but for some reason, which I still don’t get, it wasn’t scored an official knockdown. They wouldn’t even let Gaethje have that? Pricks. We all know what Gaethje’s about. Legitimately one of the most exciting fighters to watch in MMA history. He’s up there with the likes of Wanderlei Silva, Shogun Rua, Robbie Lawler, Diego Sanchez, his old mate Dustin Poirier and guys like that when it comes to that type of reputation. He’s about as close as MMA’s got to an Arturo Gatti figure. The wars with Poirier, Michael Chandler, Eddie Alvarez, the forgotten barnburner with Michael Johnson in his UFC debut, the two nutty fights with Luis Palomino back in the WSOF days. He’s been at it for years now. This’ll be his first time coming off a clean KO loss though. He’s been dropped before, stopped before, he’s been technically ‘knocked out’ by both Poirier and Alvarez. But he’d never been completely ironed out like he was by Holloway in his last fight. “This was my first time getting knocked out. I’ve done 37 fights, every time is different, the more experience you have with something, the more comfortable you become. But this is a sport where you can never be comfortable. Getting knocked out is a very good reminder of that. I think it’s going to be scary. I’m excited for the adrenaline, the nerves. I’m excited to be scared again.” - Justin Gaethje How does the rematch go then? Gaethje’s 36 now and you have to wonder, with his style and the way he fights, how many more of these wars can he be in? I’d say 36 is fairly long in the tooth for a Lightweight anyway but when you fight the way Gaethje fights and put those extra miles on your body and your chin, it’s a miracle really that he’s been able to compete at this level as long as he has. I’m sure there’s a load of doom and gloom about how Gaethje’s washed up now and stuff. It’s a ‘what have you done lately’ sport and obviously Gaethje’s last fight ended in disaster. But it’s worth remembering he’d just headkicked Poirier into crumbs before that loss and he had that win over Fiziev before that. It’s been rewritten now but most media and fan opinions going into UFC 300 were talking like Gaethje was gonna put a beating on Holloway. Now he’s being talked about like he’s shot to bits? It’s a fickle game. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Gaethje’s best days aren’t behind him but it’s amazing how quickly narratives change based on whatever the result of your most recent fight is. Not sure what the fuck happens here. Fiziev’s a bit of a mystery now coming off such a long time on the shelf and Gaethje’s coming off a brutal knockout so there’s always gonna be questions there. It’s not the ideal fight and it’s not a rematch I think we really needed to see in normal circumstances but, regardless, it should be exciting whatever happens. I don’t think their styles will really allow for anything less. Jalin Turner vs Ignacio Bahamondes is a fight I love the sound of. Had no idea it was even booked until now so this is a nice little bonus. Turner’s a good fighter but he’s in a bit of a funny position at the moment. He’s 14-8 and has lost 3 of his last 4 but I think that’s a bit misleading. He lost back-to-back split decisions to Gamrot and Hooker and I remember there being quite a bit of debate about those decisions with many thinking Turner got a raw deal with the judging. I can’t remember how I scored those fights now. And in his last fight at UFC 300 he seemed to have Renato Moicano beat, let him recover, then Moicano came back and finished him. Turner’s got nobody to blame but himself for that one but, still, his most recent three losses could’ve gone so much differently for him and his record and position in the division would be looking a lot better now. Bahamondes recently became a Dad and this has to be one of my favourite MMA pictures lately. Class, that is. The little belt is what really makes it. Bahamondes has been a bit of an undercard favourite of mine ever since his UFC debut back in 2021. He lost a split to John Makdessi that night, which wasn’t the best way to kick off his UFC career. But I remember that being a cracking fight. Since then he’s gone 5-1 with the only loss being on points against Ludovit Klein. He’s coming into this fight off the back of a couple of first round knockouts over Christos Giagos and Manuel Torres. The Torres win last time out was especially impressive because Torres had won his last 6 fights and finished all of them. He was coming in on a streak and confident and Bahamondes stopped that in its tracks. And at the Sphere of all venues. Not sure how far he can run with this but he’s always entertaining to watch so I’m happy to see him making some progress now. Amanda Lemos vs Iasmin Lucindo is just there really. I don’t hate it but I’m not in love with it either. And it definitely looks out of place on an otherwise excellent PPV main card. Oh well. This is one of those pairings where you see the matchmakers vision. Lemos is nearly 38 years old, 14-4-1 and coming off a submission loss against Virna Jandiroba in her last fight in July. In contrast, Lucindo is only 23 years old, 17-5 and on a 4 fight win streak. She’s beat Polyana Viana, Karolina Kowalkiewicz and Marina Rodriguez in her last three outings. Not mind blowing but not bad at all for a 23 year old. Lemos has definitely fought a higher level of opposition overall and she did have that win over Mackenzie Dern early last year. But she already had her shot against Zhang Weili and got schooled. At almost 38 it’s hard to see her ever getting back there and I think the matchmakers probably feel the same way and are hoping Lucindo can come through with a win here. It’d definitely be the better result for the Strawweight division going forward. King Green vs Mauricio Ruffy kicks off the main card. Love this fight. Although the timing kind of feels a bit off considering Bobby (sorry, King!) is coming in fresh off getting put to sleep by the triangle choke of Paddy Pimblett on the Manchester card over the summer. And at 38 years old and 50 fights into his career, to be thrown in with a guy 10 years younger who’s on a winning streak and is a knockout artist? Yeah, that’s why they’ve booked this fight. Ruffy’s on the rise and he’s looking like someone to keep an eye on. Despite my questioning the timing, I guess it does make sense if you’re trying to build a new star off the back of established veterans. I know Dana always says they don’t root for certain fighters or try to plan for who wins and stuff but this is clearly them hoping to give Ruffy ‘the rub’ by him catching a fading vet who’s winding down. It’s the way it’s worked forever. Ageing fighters on the way down get fed to the young lions on the way up. The questions here are 1) what does Green have left in the tank? And 2) is Ruffy as good as he’s being cracked up to be? He’s 11-1 with 10 knockouts and he’s looked good but his UFC wins so far have been Jamie Mullarkey and James Llontop. Green might have a bunch of losses but he’s been in with everyone, at all levels, and he looked great beating up Jim Miller at UFC 300 before losing to Paddy. Very interesting fight. My gut is telling me Ruffy probably gets to him but we’ll see. Joshua Van vs Rei Tsuruya is ***WAND’S ONE TO WATCH*** here. I know Gaethje vs Hooker was the obvious choice but that’s why I didn’t bother highlighting that one. What’s the point? This fight deserves some attention though because it might go under the radar. I read a stat the other day saying this will be the first fight in UFC history between two fighters born in the 2000s! No idea if that’s true and I can’t be arsed to go through every card and every fighter’s date of birth to verify. It sounds cool though and it might well be legit. This wasn’t even the original fight either. Van was all set to face Bruno Silva, that fell apart and Tsuruya stepped up on a few weeks notice. There’s Van bashing up Cody Durden in his last fight at UFC 310 in December. I’ve been banging on about how awesome Van is for a while now and I’ll continue to do so. He’s ace. Only 23 years old, 12-2 and he’s fought 6 times in the UFC so far and, I mean it when I say it, never a dull moment. Seriously, if you’re somehow not on the Van bandwagon yet (the Vanwagon?), get yourself on Fight Pass and watch all 6 of his UFC fights. If you’re not a Van fan after that, you’re a lost cause. Tsuruya’s still a bit of a mystery to me. He’s 22 years old, undefeated at 10-0 with 8 finishes and won the Road To UFC tournament early last year. He made his UFC debut in June and beat Carlos Hernandez by decision. From what I remember, he had an impressive performance and basically dominated Hernandez and tied him up in knots with his grappling for 15 minutes. I remember I went back and watched his Road To UFC final fight and he looked a handful in the grappling there as well. So this is an interesting one and could be a very tricky and different kind of test for Van. Especially considering Van had been preparing for a striker originally. Really looking forward to this. Brunno Ferreira vs Armen Petrosyan. Not bad. Not amazing either but it’s perfectly fine prelim fodder. To be fair to Ferreira, he’s been pretty consistently entertaining to watch, win or lose, so far in the UFC. He’s 12-2 with all 12 wins coming inside the distance and he knocked out Gregory Rodrigues in his UFC debut in 2023. It’s been very mixed results since but he’s been anything but boring and that’s a welcome change of pace for Middleweight, which I’ve made no secret I’m not a big fan of that division in general. Petrosyan I’m neither here nor there on. He’s 9-4 and has points wins over Robocop Rodrigues and Christian Leroy Duncan. He’s coming into this one off a couple of losses though and was last seen on the receiving end of Shara Bullet’s highlight reel double spinning backfist KO at UFC 308 in October. Alex Morono vs Carlos Leal is OK. I say it every time he fights but, whether it’s fair or not, Morono’s always been one of those fighters I see on a card and I just can’t be arsed. He’s a pretty tough guy and he’s been watchable at times but, I don’t know, he’s just bland and generic as fuck to me. If the colour beige was a fighter it’d be Alex Morono. If the Apex was a fighter it’d be Alex Morono. Leal was alright in his debut, to be fair. He stepped in on short notice and fought Rinat Fakhretdinov on the Topuria vs Holloway undercard in October. A tough assignment for his debut and he lost on points but I vaguely recall thinking he should’ve got the decision. Maybe he can drag something entertaining out of old Apex Alex? Mairon Santos vs Francis Marshall could be good. Not seen enough of either really but what I have seen hasn’t bored me. Santos just won the latest season of TUF over the summer. Never watched a second of it but I saw the finals in August and Santos definitely stood out in his second round KO over Kaan Ofli… Brutal! Santos is 24 years old and has a record of 14-1 with 8 of his wins coming by KO/TKO. Marshall’s 25 years old and 8-2 with 5 finishes, mostly submissions. He came into the UFC in 2022 unbeaten and looked good in his debut stopping Marcelo Rojo. It’s been rough since though and he then lost back-to-back fights against William Gomis and Isaac Dulgarian. In his last fight he managed to claw back a split decision win over Dennis Buzukja in August. Ozzy Diaz vs Djorden Santos. Dunno. Seen less than a round of one guy and fuck all of the other. Diaz is 34 years old and 9-3 with 9 finishes. Made his UFC debut on the Macau card in November and got sat down and stopped by the elbow and follow up ground and pound of Zhang Mingyang early into their fight. Santos is making his debut here. He’s 27 with a record of 10-1 and 7 finishes and won a decision on DWCS in his last fight in September. That’s your lot. Edited March 8, 2025 by wandshogun09 Quote
Dai Posted February 21, 2025 Posted February 21, 2025 (edited) Great write up! Surely the Blaydes fight doesnt end up staying there? Seems really bizarre. The last Pereira fight may have been more impressive and scary than the others, as it was clear as day that he was intentionally fighting at about 50% capacity for those first three rounds, and was priming Roundtree for the kill. Then when he clearly flipped the switch and went into 'kill mode' for the first time in the fight, he absolutley destoryed poor Khalil. Super impressive. As you said, Ankalaev's previous wins dont exactly get the juices flowing about this one, but any chance to see Pereira fight should be cherished. Your write up about guys like Ignacio Bahamondes and Joshua Van got me thinking that the UFC really should do a highlights package on the main card about the best bits of the prelims. These prelim guys you mention are unknowns to me, but clearly decent guys who have done good things, but because I dont watch the prelims I have no clue who they are, yet now one of the ones you mentioned is the third fight on a PPV. They have so much time to fill on shows that surely a 2 minute highlight real of whats gone on on the prelims would make decent sesne. Edited February 21, 2025 by Dai Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted February 21, 2025 Author Paid Members Posted February 21, 2025 3 hours ago, Dai said: Your write up about guys like Ignacio Bahamondes and Joshua Van got me thinking that the UFC really should do a highlights package on the main card about the best bits of the prelims. These prelim guys you mention are unknowns to me, but clearly decent guys who have done good things, but because I dont watch the prelims I have no clue who they are, yet now one of the ones you mentioned is the third fight on a PPV. They have so much time to fill on shows that surely a 2 minute highlight real of whats gone on on the prelims would make decent sesne. This is a good point actually and I do wonder if it’s partly why a lot of the roster outside the top guys in each division haven’t really fully connected or gained followings like they used to. The sheer size of the roster these days and the amount of shows now obviously works against it. But maybe what you’re saying is part of it as well. I’m guessing there’s a decent chunk of the fanbase who don’t bother with the prelims or most Fight Nights so PPV main cards will be their main (and sometimes only) exposure to the UFC. The thing is, years ago the best prelims often used to get slotted in on the PPV broadcast if there was time. Like if there were a couple of quick finishes on the main card they’d fill some time by showing something from the prelims like a highlight reel KO or a show stealing fight. I became a fan of a few fighters that way, only getting to see them because the production crew needed to fill time on the air. Fucking Frankie Edgar vs Tyson Griffin from UFC 67, for me, to this day is still one of the greatest fights in the history of the Lightweight division and that was on the prelims and only made TV because main card fights ended quick. It was a different time though because back then prelims weren’t televised at all as their own thing. The only way you were seeing prelims up until about 2011ish was either, like I said, if they had time to squeeze one or two in on the PPV. Or you’d have to wait for the DVD release months later. And even then, you only got DVDs of PPVs. So if there was a banger prelim on a Fight Night back then, there wasn’t really any way to see it if it never made the air. It’s funny to look back at that time. We’d be dying to see prelims on every card and I remember when they finally started airing the prelims in their own allocated block on TV leading into the PPVs, it was a game changer. I remember one of the first shows where we got prelims televised live was UFC 125 (with the Edgar vs Maynard 2 classic in the main event) and I vividly recall absolutely buzzing because we were getting to see the Jeremy Stephens vs Marcus Davis prelim live. Fast forward to 2025 and it’s a chore to sit through a lot of the shit they put on the prelims now. People can say we’re spoiled now and we are in terms of having access to everything these days. But the quality has definitely suffered as well and that makes skipping prelims easy. I wouldn’t have dreamed of skipping prelims if I could’ve watched them in 2009. The sweet spot for me would be for them to do less cards, trim the roster of a lot of the ham and eggers and you’d get less shows but much better shows. Quality over quantity. I get why they don’t do that from the boring business perspective but the product was so much more enjoyable and fun when it was one PPV and maybe one Fight Night a month. And I don’t think that’s just nostalgia talking. The current way is better for them financially but there’s so much white noise on the roster now. Anyway, yeah, definitely watch those guys I mentioned. Quote
Dai Posted February 24, 2025 Posted February 24, 2025 Ah yes, I used to love the 'bonus' fights at the end of a show. Like you said, this was a time when you literally had just one show to watch for the month, so to have the prelims too was fine as you had to make it last for weeks on end. Did they ever put the odd prelim fight inbetween fights on the PPVs too, or was it just after the main? Maybe my mind is playing tricks but I also remember them slotting them in during the show if fights 1, 2 and 3 ended quickly. Like you said, theres so much bloat now that theyre not special any more anyway, but surely a quick five minute segment during the main show about whats gone on in the prelims seems to make sense to me. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted February 24, 2025 Author Paid Members Posted February 24, 2025 29 minutes ago, Dai said: Did they ever put the odd prelim fight inbetween fights on the PPVs too, or was it just after the main? Maybe my mind is playing tricks but I also remember them slotting them in during the show if fights 1, 2 and 3 ended quickly. Definitely. They’ve always seemed to run by a schedule on their PPVs of allocating half an hour for 3 round fights. That allows for the possibility it goes the full 15 minutes plus time for all the other stuff like the pre-fight video packages, entrances, Buffer intros and post-fight carry on. For 5 round fights it’s probably 45 minutes to an hour. So on a 3 hour PPV with 5 main card fights, they generally seem to target the main event going on at the start of the third hour. So I’ve rambled but, yeah, there were definitely a bunch of cases of them slotting in prelims in the middle of PPV main cards if they were running ahead of schedule due to fights ending quickly. The times when you’d get prelims tacked on the end of a show would usually be when the main event ended early. Quote
Dai Posted February 24, 2025 Posted February 24, 2025 Funny that these days the PPVs are still the same length but theyve got rid of it in favour of... nothing. For PPVs I don't really notice a huge amount of fluff these days, which is odd as they must just rabbit on to fill the time. Quote
Bruce85 Posted February 24, 2025 Posted February 24, 2025 I watch the events through the discovery app on the ps5 and it has the time stamps so I can just jump to each fight and miss out all the fluff and ads so I assume there isn’t one but a prelim highlight package on the main card couldn’t hurt to build up some fighters. I definitely remember back in the day on Bravo TV seeing some prelims at the end of PPVs! Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted February 25, 2025 Author Paid Members Posted February 25, 2025 Can’t embed the tweet for some reason but apparently Hooker is out of the Gaethje fight. We can’t have anything can we? Quote
Panhead Posted February 25, 2025 Posted February 25, 2025 I let out an "Oh no!" when I saw the tweet. My Mrs and little one were both like "What's happened?!" No sympathy when I told them. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted February 25, 2025 Author Paid Members Posted February 25, 2025 28 minutes ago, Panhead said: No sympathy when I told them. Same here. I was like “Fuck sake, gutted. Hooker’s let me down, I was looking forward to that as well”. For some reason Mrs Wand wasn’t impressed. Reckon I’m on the sofa tonight. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted February 27, 2025 Author Paid Members Posted February 27, 2025 New co-main… Quote
Dai Posted February 27, 2025 Posted February 27, 2025 Considering it's only a week away, that's a good save. Fair play to Fiziev too. Fighting Gaethje on a weeks notice, whilst not preparing for a fight himself, and having been out of action for 18 months. Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted February 27, 2025 Paid Members Posted February 27, 2025 great save! Fiziev is either completely ready or completely insane to be going into a 5 rounder with Gaethje on such short notice. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted February 27, 2025 Author Paid Members Posted February 27, 2025 Especially when you remember how he looked at the end of their first fight… Quote
Zebra Kid Mark Posted February 27, 2025 Posted February 27, 2025 I'm a bit let down by the replacement. Fiziev already lost to Justin when both were coming out of full fight camps. Fiziev hasn't won a fight since and hasn't had a full training camp, nothing there makes me think the result will be any different to their first fight. I know it's a week out and they were desperate, but I would have rather have seen a fresh match up and seen Bobby Green or Jalin Turner (both already on the card) get that spot and then bring in Fiziev to replace whoever stepped up to the co main event. Quote
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