UFC 165 Main Card To Re-Air On FOX Sports 1 This Thursday

In an unusual move, the recent UFC 165 main card, which first aired on pay-per-view, will be re-broadcast on FOX Sports 1 this coming Thursday night at 8pm ET as part of a ‘UFC Reloaded’ special.

That gives fans a chance to re-live the ‘Fight Of The Year’ candidate light-heavyweight title fight between Jon Jones and Alexander Gustafsson, so keep your scorecards at the ready and see whether you agree with the highly debated judges decision.

The replay also features the interim bantamweight title fight between Renan Barao and Eddie Wineland which ended with a spectacular finish, heavyweight action featuring Brendan Schaub Vs Matt Mitrione, 185lb’ers Costa Philippou and Francis Carmont, plus highly rated lightweight contenders Khabib Nurmagomedov and Pat Healy.

UFC 165 was widely considered to be one of the best PPV cards of the year so it’s definitely good to see it get some more exposure roughly a month after it first aired.

It’s unclear exactly why the UFC have decided to do this though. Perhaps it’s simply just a case of helping to push this coming weekend’s major UFC 166 event which features another major title fight, this time between heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez and Junior Dos Santos.

Alternatively, it could be an experiment to see what kind of ratings they can deliver for a replay like this on FOX Sports 1. The channel is still struggling on the ratings front at the moment and while the UFC’s shows are underperforming compared to the kind of numbers they were experiencing on FX, they are still regularly among the most watched shows on FS1, so it makes sense for them to attempt to deliver more content from the promotion.

If it’s able to pull in a decent audience then perhaps this could become something that happens more often, and that’d certainly be a good thing for MMA fans.

Ross launched MMA Insight (previously FightOfTheNight.com) in 2009 as a way to channel his passion for the sport of mixed martial arts. He's since penned countless news stories and live fight reports along with dozens of feature articles as the lead writer for the site, reaching millions of fans in the process.