[alnorth]

Well, we finally made it. After a long drought where we had European kickboxing or Alaskan smokers Wednesday on fightpass, or putrid unwatchable cards in the middle of the day on FS1 (or more recently, no UFC at all), UFC 223 is this weekend.

I'm normally not this hyped about what honestly is just a pretty good PPV in normal times, but it has been a very long time since we had a card this good on paper (barring injury or weight cut disasters), and looking ahead it'll be a while before we have another good PPV.

Friday

6pm - (Fightpass) - Titan FC 49

Judging by tapology rankings, this is very good by B-level promotion standards, which probably shouldn't be surprising since Titan is arguably the best of the 2nd-tier promotions. Oh, but Bellator has something going on, lets take a look at that...

7pm - (Paramount) - Bellator 196, Henderson vs. Huerta

Yuck. This card is ****ing terrible by Bellator standards. Its on tape delay so all the fights will be spoiled on twitter before this starts. Its got Benson Henderson at the top, and at this point it looks like they are trying to salvage what is now clearly a bad free agent signing by just throwing some random dude at him. Looking at the rest of the card, judging by tapology rankings this is miserable, many local promotions have better cards than this, including Titan FC. So if you have Fightpass, go watch that. If you don't.... then maybe watch baseball I guess? Or catch up on your DVR'd shows that you promised you'd watch one day, well I think that day may have arrived.

Saturday

7pm TV - (5:15pm Fightpass/7pm FS1/9pm PPV) - UFC 223, Khabib vs. Holloway

Hell yeah. Every fight on the main card is good or at least interesting if you think Holloway has no chance. The prelims have 2 compelling fights important to their divisions, and the early prelim even has a couple fun fights out of 4 scheduled. This is a very good PPV by UFC standards, which perhaps looks even better than it is considering we're in the middle of a tough stretch where the UFC seems to be holding everything back for a July blowout.

After this weekend, the rest of the spring and early summer will be at least a little bit less miserable as the UFC changes strategy from "lol, we're not competing against the super bowl or the NCAA tournament, we'll show nothing worth a damn" to "we're holding back the good stuff for July, but eh, for now we'll start throwing one or two good fights at our fans every card until July".