The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) announced that three UFC 125 preliminary fights will air live on Ion Television. This marks the first time UFC prelims will air live and free on network television.
The Ion broadcast will take place New Year’s Day, Saturday, January 1st starting at 8:55 pm ET/5:55 pm PT.
The action kicks off with a fight featuring Phil Baroni vs. Brad Tavares in a middleweight contest, then Josh Grispi vs. Dustin Poirier in featherweight action and Marcus Davis vs. Jeremy Stephens in a highly-anticipated lightweight clash.
By airing live prelim fights on network television, UFC noted that Saturday’s prelims will reach a potential audience of almost 100 million US households.
“I am excited for our fans because I’ve been looking for ways to broadcast UFC prelims free and to as many homes as possible. Ion is the largest broadcast television station group in the US and this deal will put the UFC prelims in almost 100 million homes,” said UFC President Dana White.
Owned and operated by Zuffa LLC, and headquartered in Las Vegas, UFC produces over twelve UFC live Pay-Per-View events annually and 30 live arena events around the world. UFC programming is distributed in the United States on Viacom’s Spike TV and on Comcast’s Versus network. UFC content is distributed commercially through Joe Hand Promotions in the U.S. and Canadastar in Canada. Globally, UFC programming is broadcast in over 147 countries and territories, reaching 430 million homes worldwide, in 19 different languages.
