The UFC is heading back to the UK, with Nottingham, England due to welcome the famed Octagon for the first time on Saturday, September 29.
The fight card for the event is off to a good start, with a bantamweight bout between Drew Pickett and Yves Jabouin announced, along with a featherweight fight between Andy Ogle and Akira Corassani. Neither fight, however, is likely to be the main event, as none of the four combatants has ever been a headliner (and Ogle and Corassani, both alumni of The Ultimate Fighter, will make their official UFC debuts at the event).
In conjunction with the official announcement, UFC president Dana White mentioned British fighters Dan Hardy and Paul Sass as possibilities for the fight card, but it looks as if the big prize would be middleweight Michael Bisping.
Bisping discussed the possibility of fighting in Nottingham on Monday, when he was a guest on The MMA Hour, and while Bisping would embrace the opportunity, he's having surgery on a torn meniscus - the injury that derailed his planned bout with Tim Boetsch on the UFC 149 fight card - and will need to have a sense of his rehab from that surgery before a fight can be signed. Obviously, if Bisping is available, it would make a great deal of sense to have the UFC's most popular fighter in the UK headline the event, possibly building momentum for an eventual shot at Anderson Silva.
It is interesting to see the UFC go to a smaller venue in the UK, as opposed to the larger venues in London, Manchester and Birmingham that have hosted events, but the expansion of the UFC's broadcast offerings has led to a number of new venues and smaller shows. Still, don't expect Pickett-Jabouin or Ogle-Corassani to be one of the top fights on the card. In all likelihood, the UFC is just getting started on this one.
