Getty Alex Caceres and Chase Hooper face off during the UFC 250 Prelims at UFC APEX on June 05, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
Alex “Bruce Leroy” Caceres (15-12) and Chase “The Dream” Hooper (9-0-1) will highlight the UFC 250 Prelims before the main card gets underway later on Saturday evening.
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The early prelims start at 6 p.m. ET, and the second set of prelims start at 8 p.m. ET. All of the prelim fights will be on ESPN, but if you don’t have cable, you can also watch them live on ESPN+:
Or, if you also plan on watching Nunes vs Spencer and the UFC 250 main card, you can get a special bundle that includes a year of ESPN+ ($49.99 value) and the UFC 250 PPV ($64.99 value) for $84.98, which works out to about 26 percent savings:
Once signed up, you can then watch all the UFC 250 fights on your computer via ESPN.com, or you can watch on your phone (Android and iPhone compatible), tablet, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, or other compatible streaming device via the ESPN app.
For all of those options, you’ll need to sign in with your ESPN+ account to watch.
UFC 250 Prelims Preview
The 31-year-old Caceres hasn’t fought since July 2019, when he defeated Steven Peterson. Caceres is 5-5 over his last 10 fights, and he recently told MMA Junkie that he’s ready to start stringing some wins together in order to improve his rankings.
“I know that I’m somewhat of a gatekeeper at the moment. I will accept my position, but I won’t be satisfied with it. I’m trying to push further every single day, but I know where I’m at this point — especially when it comes to rankings, and I guess what everyone else sees. But I know what I’m capable of. So for me, it’s a good proving ground,” he said this week.
His near year-long hiatus, he says, has provided him with an opportunity to get better. “The time off was necessary. I did try to come back a little earlier, but then this whole virus thing happened. But I’m excited to show my skill because I’ve improved a lot in the places I needed to improve and I’m quite ready,” he noted.
As for the 20-year-old Hooper, he’s young, but he is already learning to embrace his uniqueness. “I’m not just like every other fighter,” Hooper said this week. “I’m a young kid who’s not intimidating at all. But if I tried to be intimidating, it just wouldn’t be genuine. That’s just not who I am, and I think people can definitely see that … You gotta show your personality and not necessarily make that something that you think people would like … I’ve always been the weird nerdy kid, I guess. Through all my school stuff, probably 90 percent of the people I graduated with don’t even know me, and they would only know me now because of the fighting stuff.”
It will be Hooper’s second UFC Fight ever, but he’s not intimidated.
“I think that the experience gap is definitely real, but the fact is that with all that experience and all those fights in the UFC, for him it’s just another fight so he doesn’t have the same drive,” Hooper said. We’ll soon find out if he’s correct in his assumptions.
Here is a look at the Prelim bouts featured on the card:
Early Prelims
- Jussier Formiga (23-7) vs. Alex Perez (23-5)
- Alonzo Menifield (9-0) vs. Devin Clark (11-4)
- Evan Dunham (18-8-1) vs. Herbert Burns (10-2)
Prelims
- Alex Caceres (15-12) vs. Chase Hooper (9-0-1)
- Ian Heinisch (13-3) vs. Gerald Meerschaert (30-12)
- Cody Stamann (18-2) vs. Brian Kelleher (21-10)
- Charles Byrd (10-6) vs. Maki Pitolo (12-5)