With Max Holloway out of his title fight against Frankie Edgar at UFC 222 due to an injury, the Las Vegas based promotion has reshuffled its deck and come up with a new main event that's the surest sign yet that it's high time the UFC drastically scale back their PPV business if not spike it entirely. We'll wait for it to roll around and see if the scheduled fights actually happen before commenting too much on that front.
With FOX spending big for Thursday night NFL rights, the bargaining position for UFC broadcast rights continues to weaken. There's no chance whatsoever they'll be able to extract the $400m per year they were reportedly hoping for but a step in the right direction would be guaranteeing more title fights for the broadcast network. Frankly I'm not even sure Cyborg vs Kunitskaya would be a legitimate FS1 main event. But at least people would know who they were and maybe start caring a little if they could watch them without having to pay for them.
Meanwhile I'm ready to announce the first main event for the Oceanic Fighting Championship (formerly Openweight Fighting Championship but retaining the same initials). Before Stipe Miocic broke the consecutive Heavyweight title defence record last month, Daniel Cormier had talked about going up in weight to defend Cain Velasquez's honor in that regard. Now he and Miocic are fighting for real in the summer. So in the meantime how about Cain goes and defends DC's honor? Battling at Openweight I present to you Jon Jones vs Cain Velasquez. Since we're in international waters, both can do whatever steroids they need to in order to make it to the fight. Who says no to that?
Picks after the jump.
