Getty Calvin Kattar and Dan Ige will face off in UFC Fight Night's featured bout.
Calvin Kattar and Dan Ige take center stage Wednesday evening in a featherweight showdown, which will be the main event of UFC’s Fight Night at Fight Island in Abu Dhabi.
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Both the prelims (7 p.m. ET) and the main card (10 p.m. ET) will be televised on ESPN, but if you don’t have cable, you can watch all the fights via ESPN+.
Once signed up, you can then watch Kattar vs Ige and all the 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.
Kattar vs Ige Preview
Ige (14-2, 6-1 in the UFC) enters this bout on quite a hot streak. He has won six straight fights and 12 of his last 13. In his two most recent contests, he handed both Mirsad Bektic and Edson Barbosa losses, and he’ll be looking at a potential breakthrough into the top 10 with a win against Kattar. It almost feels like Ige is on the edge of greatness, and he can sense it, too.
“With the momentum I have now, I’m just believing in myself more and more,” Ige said heading into the bout. “I have so much in me and I haven’t shown what I’m capable of. I’m growing and getting better and I’m realizing this potential that I have. I really have the ability, I believe, to be the champion, and I know it’s right there for me. I feel I’m doing it right. It’s just literally a matter of time.”
Kattar (21-4, 5-2 in the UFC) is coming off an impressive second-round KO win over Jeremy Stephens. At 5’11” he has a four-inch height advantage over the 5’7″ Ige, and he’s looking to use this fight as a stepping stone of sorts — because ultimately, what he’s looking for is a crack at the featherweight title.
“To get those big-moment opportunities, you have to fight someone with clout on the other end,” Kattar said. “You have to fight guys on six-fight winning streaks. You want to keep moving up, you have to go out there and do something worth noticing, and for me, that’d be taking out a guy like Dan Ige. I think Dan Ige and I are similar in the fact that we’ve both been overlooked and counted out quite a bit. No one expected us to be here. But here we are, the main event on Fight Island and I can promise you this: I’m not going to be like those other guys who overlooked Dan Ige. He’s got my full attention and I’m going to look to put his winning streak to an end.”
UFC president Dana White thinks this could be one of the more evenly-matched and intriguing bouts to hit one of his cards in awhile.
“To me, this stylistically is an unbelievable fight,” White said about the upcoming battle. “These are two tough, nasty, hard-nosed guys who are just going to stand there and trade. And everyone has been looking past Ige … So this is his chance to erase those doubts and prove a point against a guy in Kattar, who is as legit as there is and is a big, mean, tough dude.”
Kattar is the early favorite to win, but don’t count Ige out. His star is on the rise, and, as White noted, he seeks to gain a great deal if he comes out on top here.