UFC 140 Preliminary Card Bouts To Air On ION Television

Source: Heavy

The UFC will end it's multi-year relationship with SpikeTV this January, moving on to bigger and better things through a new deal with Fox networks. The relationship between the UFC and SpikeTV continues to drag along now though, with the latter taking an adversarial approach to their longtime business partners. As a result, the two entities have gone back and forth undermining the other, with the UFC's latest jab being the announcement that a selected portion of the impending UFC 140: Jones vs. Machida fight card will be aired on ION Television, as opposed to SpikeTV, per usual custom.

Heavy reports that the UFC will air four preliminary fights on ION, with the lineup looking like this:

Light heavyweight: Igor Pokrajac vs. Krzysztof Soszynski
Middleweight: Jared Hamman vs. Constantinos Philippou
Welterweight: John Makdessi vs. Dennis Hallman
Bantamweight: Yves Jabouin vs. Walel Watson

The UFC aired preliminary bouts on ION Television once before, for the UFC 125: Edgar vs. Maynard 2 fight card this past January, when they were in dicey renewal negotiations with Spike. Heavy reports that the UFC's deal with Spike will come to an end with the airing of two preliminary card bouts ahead of UFC 141 late next month.

UFC 140: Jones vs. Machida goes down on December 10 at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Ontario.

Mark Wayne is the head writer for FightLine.com. He can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/_MarkWayne.