Best and Worst from UFC on Fox 31: Lee vs. Iaquinta 2

#2 Best: The UFC goes out with a bang

The UFC's 7-year run on Fox is now over

The UFC isn’t always good at saying goodbye – witness how longtime announcer Mike Goldberg was cut free without a word of tribute at the end of 2016, for instance – and given they’re moving onto a rival network in ESPN, I didn’t expect them to make a big deal about leaving Fox last night. But they did, and well, it was pretty great.

We got a video package highlighting some of the great UFC moments that Fox has broadcast; from Junior Dos Santos’s title victory over Cain Velasquez on the first broadcast in 2011 to TJ Dillashaw’s shellacking of Renan Barao in 2015, and fighters like Daniel Cormier, Jimi Manuwa and Ricardo Lamas paid tribute to the network and how it had showcased them over the past 7 years.

And the fighters largely delivered too – a bunch of prelims that nobody really cared about going in lit up the Octagon, as fights like Joaquim Silva vs. Jared Gordon and Dan Ige vs. Jordan Griffin turned out to be absolute barnburners, arguably some of the best fights of 2018 in fact.

I won’t miss the shoddy pacing of these Fox shows, but overall I’d say the network has done a great job of showcasing the UFC over the last 7 years – I can’t believe it’s gone that quickly – and last night was a great tribute to them, so kudos to the UFC for that.