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Before Yoel Romero vs Luke Rockhold, Mark Hunt vs Curtis Blaydes and the entire UFC 221 main card, there are a seven preliminary fights on tap for Saturday night at the Perth Arena in Australia: Luke Jumeau vs Daichi Abe, Teruto Ishihara vs Jose Alberto Quinonez and Ross Pearson vs Mizuto Hirota on the UFC Fight Pass card, and Jussier Formiga vs Ben Nguyen, Jeremy Kennedy vs Alexander Volkanovski, Rob Wilkinson vs Israel Adesanya and Damien Brown vs Dong Hyun Kim on the FS1 card.
The first prelim card, which starts at 6:30 p.m. ET, can be watched online via UFC Fight Pass, which offers a free 7-day trial.
The second card, which starts at 8 p.m. ET, will be broadcast on Fox Sports 1. If you don’t have cable or can’t get to a TV, you can watch FS1 online, on your phone or on another streaming device by signing up for a free trial of one of the following cable-free, live-TV streaming services. They all cost a monthly fee but come with a free trial, allowing you to watch tonight’s action at no cost:
FuboTV: Fox Sports 1 is included in the “Fubo Premier” channel package. You can sign up for a free 7-day trial, and you can then watch on your computer via the FuboTV website, or on your phone, tablet or streaming device via the FuboTV app
DirecTV Now: Fox Sports 1 is included in all four channel packages. You can sign up for a free 7-day trial no matter what package you choose, plus you can get a free Amazon Fire TV if you prepay two months. Once signed up, you can watch on your computer via the DirecTV Now website, or on your phone, tablet or streaming device via the DirecTV Now app
Sling TV: Fox Sports 1 is included in the “Sling Blue” channel package. You can sign up for a free 7-day trial, and you can then watch on your computer via the Sling TV website, or on your phone, tablet or streaming device via the Sling TV app
Preview
Former XFC lightweight champion Damien Brown’s UFC career has been a rocky one. After rebounding from a loss in his debut with wins against Cesar Arzamendia and Jon Tuck, he’s now back on a two-fight losing streak, having dropped bouts against Vinc Pichel and Frank Camacho in 2017.
Still, the latter–which earned the “Fight of the Night” bonus–could have certainly gone either way, and the Brisbane native still has hopes of using Saturday night’s fight as a springboard for greater things:
“I want to get a statement win and then weigh up what’s next. I’d really like to fight during International Fight Week,” he said. “I know I probably wouldn’t get on [UFC] 226, but maybe one of those other cards that they have on during that week. I think it’d be great to be able to go over and fight during that week and then take it all in. That’d be something I’d love to tick off the list for sure.
“Hopefully a statement win would get me a big name who has had a couple of losses recently, because it’s pretty hard to get a top-ranked opponent when they’re winning, because they’re going up [the rankings] as well. Someone who is still one of the best in the world, like a Michael Johnson or Gilbert Melendez, hopefully I get one of these guys if I can get enough of a statement win.”
Kim, meanwhile, enters with some opposite momentum. After losing his first two fights under the UFC banner, “The Maestro” earned a unanimous decision victory against Brendan O’Reilly and followed that up with an impressive 90-second TKO of Takanori Gomi in September.
“He’s got heavy hands,” Brown said. “If he puts leather on you, he can put you to sleep. But if you look at the fight before [Gomi] against Brendan O’Reilly, that was boring. You don’t know who you are gonna get, but at the end of the day if he turns up and he wants to throw down, then it’s going to be a pretty exciting fight. He has that ability.