Scott Jorgensen
Bantamweights will open UFC on FX 3 card on June 8
Voting is complete in the UFC’s Hometown Throwdown contest, and a pair of bantamweights will open up the main card of the next UFC on FX event.
The bout between Eddie Wineland and Scott Jorgensen got some stiff early competition from Mike Pierce–Carlos Eduardo Rocha. But ultimately, Wineland-Jorgensen pulled away to win the fan voting, making the bout the first on the main card of UFX on FX 3 in June.
UFC on FX: Johnson vs. McCall takes place June 8 at the BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise, Fla., a suburb of Fort Lauderdale. The arena is the home of the NHL’s Florida Panthers, and the fight card will be the UFC’s third to air on the FX cable network.
The location was chosen through fan voting in the Harley-Davidson Hometown Throwdown. The additional fan-interactive piece was voting to choose the first fight on the FX broadcast. Fans could choose between Wineland-Jorgensen, Pierce-Rocha and a bantamweight fight between Seth Baczynski and Lance Benoist. Pierce-Rocha and Baczynski-Benoist now will appear on the preliminary card.
UFC on FX 3 will feature a main event flyweight rematch between Demetrious Johnson and Ian McCall. The two 125-pounders will meet again to finally get some closure on their first fight, which took last month in Sydney, Australia, at UFC on FX: Alves vs. Kampmann. The two met in the semifinals of the UFC’s four-man tournament to determine its first flyweight champion.
After a close fight, Johnson was announced as the split decision winner. But at the post-fight news conference, UFC president Dana White revealed that a mistake was made in the score tallying by the commissioner in Sydney and the fight was actually a draw. The UFC had created a provision for such an occurrence, and a fourth sudden-victory round was supposed to take place. But it didn’t happen when Johnson was declared the winner. Now the two will face each other one more time to determine who will face Joseph Benavidez for the UFC’s first flyweight title, a bout that now likely will happen in late 2012 instead of this summer. Benavidez beat Yasuhiro Urushitani in Sydney right after the Johnson-McCall fight, but now must wait to learn whom his opponent will be.
Two other fights are locked in for the main card on FX. Surging welterweight Josh Neer will face Mike Pyle, and Charlie Brenneman takes on Erick Silva, also in a 170-pound bout.