UFC 173 aired Saturday night on FOX Sports 1. The problem was it happened during UFC Fight Night: Machida vs. Dollaway from Barueri, Brazil.
Before former UFC bantamweight champion Renan Barao’s co-main event matchup with Mitch Gagnon, the channel aired the intro to the UFC 173 pay-per-view event, which took place on May 24. Barao fell to T.J. Dillashaw in the headliner of that card.
A source told MMA Fighting that the on-site production crew mistakenly switched to UFC 173 instead of the live shot from Barueri, Brazil or the studio. It ran for nearly five minutes before FOX Sports 1 corrected the mistake.
The source said UFC production for live FOX events typically has three feeds. The first, the ‘A’ feed, is the live shot from the arena. The second, the ‘B’ feed, is the same as the first except with interviews from the back. Then there is the ‘C’ feed, which adds highlight packages and other things to the second feed. There was no ‘C’ feed Saturday night in Brazil, which is rare. The source said that UFC 173 was likely running along what is usually the ‘C’ feed so producers could clip off Barao highlights. Somehow the ‘B’ and ‘C’ feeds got switched and the ‘C’ feed — UFC 173 — made the air.
“That’s what happens when you feed from a remote site and your lines get mixed up,” the source said.
Viewers saw 4:24 of UFC 173, starting from the UFC’s “Face the Pain” pay-per-view open to fighter trash talk to highlights to UFC play-by-play man Mike Goldberg talking up the card. Luckily, none of the fights from the live event were missed.
Marshall Zelaznik, the UFC’s chief content officer, said the gaffe only happened in the United States.
“In the U.S., they had an issue with the broadcast that came right before the Barao fight and it didn’t affect anywhere else in the world, it didn’t affect anything in Brazil,” Zelaznik said at the UFC Fight Night: Machida vs. Dollaway post-fight press conference. “I think it was a transmission issue that FOX was having in the U.S., but I’m not certain about that. It was just in the U.S.”