5 weakest UFC pay-per-view cards of all time

#2 UFC 72: Victory – 06/16/2007

UFC 72 was the first UFC show in Northern Ireland, but the card was weak

April 2007 saw the UFC return to the UK for the first time in 5 years, and the show they put on – UFC 70 – was a barnburner that saw the likes of Mirko Cro Cop, Gabriel Gonzaga, Andrei Arlovski and Lyoto Machida in action. A couple of months later the promotion returned – this time to Northern Ireland – but to say the card they put together was underwhelming would be an understatement.

The UFC’s first show in Belfast was initially main-evented by a Middleweight fight between former champion Rich Franklin and Martin Kampmann, who was then replaced by Yushin Okami due to an injury. While Franklin was a recognised headliner, Okami had only appeared in one televised UFC fight prior to this event.

The co-main event didn’t sound much better – Forrest Griffin, returning from his knockout at the hands of Keith Jardine, was booked against Hector Ramirez, a largely unknown fighter who’d been knocked out by James Irvin in a preliminary bout in his Octagon debut.

The card was rounded out with fights between Jason MacDonald and Rory Singer, Clay Guida and Tyson Griffin, and Ed Herman and Scott Smith. Both Guida and Griffin were considered fast-rising stars, but none of the 6 was considered to be in title contention, and more worryingly, only Herman was not coming off a loss in his last Octagon appearance.

In execution, the show was almost as bad as fans feared it would be going in. Griffin and Guida put on a tremendous fight but the rest was pretty dull, and when 2007 ended it was only the presence of that Lightweight classic that kept the show from being considered the worst of the year.