UFC 304 goes down on July 27th from Manchester, England and is expected to feature two title fights. Prelims also start at 11pm local time, setting up a crazy late night for U.K. fans.
Tom Aspinall is fighting to have UFC 304 in Manchester moved to a more reasonable time.
UFC announced the good news last week: a big pay-per-view event in the new 20,000 seater Co-op Live arena. The bad news: the pay-per-view starts at 10PM E.T., which is 3AM in England. That’s right, it’s a repeat of UFC 204 in 2016, when the main event between Michael Bisping and Dan Henderson went on around 5AM.
Tom Aspinall is expected to make an interim heavyweight title defense at the show, and he sided with the fans on how much the time decision sucked.
“As an athlete, as a fighter, it honestly doesn’t make that much difference,” he started. “For a couple of weeks before, I’ll have to wake up and train at that time or stay up or whatever. I’ve flown across the world multiple times and fought in different time zones, so it’s not as bad as that.”
“As a fan who wants to watch it live? I think it’s absolutely terrible,” Aspinall continued. “I think it’s just not fair on the fans, not fair on the UK fans. Obviously predominantly it’s an American audience so I understand that, they want to sell to them. But why can’t they sell to them in the afternoon which is our evening time?”
“Why can’t Americans watch it in the afternoon and the UK fans, the Manchester fans, the European fans can all fly to the event, sell out this new arena. It’s going to sell out regardless. We’re very lucky to have a PPV in Manchester. But it’s UK MMA, let’s put it on UK time.”
As Aspinall noted, the event is set to sell out regardless of what time the UFC holds it in Manchester. But will as many people in America buy the pay-per-view if it isn’t at the same time it always is?
Corporate bean-counters must have looked it over and decided nein, so of course it’s the hardcore UK fans that get the shaft, not the clueless casuals who don’t care enough to double check UFC 304’s start time.