As alluded to Monday on Bloody Elbow and first reported by MMA Junkie and others Tuesday, Jake Ellenberger vs. Diego Sanchez will be the main event for the UFC’s first event on Fuel TV on Wednesday, February 15 in Omaha, NE.
The UFC confirmed the bout on their website Tuesday.
Ellenberger (26-5) is on a five-fight win streak and is coming off a 53-second TKO win over Jake Shields in September, while Sanchez (23-4) has two wins in a row. His last victory was a controversial unanimous decision over Martin Kampmann in March, a fight that many saw going for Kampmann. He was scheduled to face Matt Hughes at September’s UFC 135 but had to withdraw due to injury.
The UFC has been starting to fill up cards on the Fox family of networks for the first quarter of 2011, adding Jorge Rivera vs. Eric Schafer, Ryan Jimmo vs. Karlos Vemola and Mike Brown vs. Vagner Rocha for UFC on FX 1 and Mike Russow vs. Jon Olav Einemo for UFC on Fox 2. To this point, none have been confirmed by the UFC.
It’s interesting the UFC would put such a high-profile welterweight fight on a network that only reaches 32 million U.S households where FX reaches nearly 100 million. Perhaps this is the kickoff to a ‘call your cable provider’ campaign by the UFC and Fox for fans to demand increased Fuel TV distribution.
This post was updated at 1:30 AM EST.
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