Jack who? ESPN demotes the Jacare vs Jack Hermansson main card to ESPN+

[Deleted member 436105]

ESPN not putting up with crap cards like Fox

The next UFC on ESPN show has been converted to an ESPN+ card.

It was announced on Saturday night (H/T MMAjunkie’s Mike Bohn) that the promotion’s April 27th event is now going to have the main card moved to ESPN+. The main event was initially Ronaldo Souza against Yoel Romero, but Romero’s illness led to Jack Hermansson stepping in on short notice to face the Brazilian grappler instead. Evidently Hermansson isn’t quite the name value expected to garner major attention on ESPN TV, so the switch has been made.

Interestingly enough, the way the show is constructed, you’ll have to now go through three different ESPN platforms to watch the whole card. Originally, ESPN+ was to broadcast the early prelims, followed by prelims and main card on ESPN. Now, ESPN 2 and ESPN+ will simulcast the early prelims, ESPN has the rest of the prelims, then you switch to ESPN+ for the main card. Make sense? I hope it does.

Here’s the bout order:

Main Card (ESPN+, 9 PM ET)

Ronaldo Souza vs. Jack Hermansson
Greg Hardy vs. Dmitrii Smoliakov
Alex Oliveira vs. Mike Perry
Glover Teixeira vs. Ion Cutelaba
John Lineker vs. Cory Sandhagen
Roosevelt Roberts vs. Thomas Gifford

Preliminary Card (ESPN, 7 PM ET)

Ben Saunders vs. Takashi Sato
Andrei Arlovski vs. Augusto Sakai
Carla Esparza vs. Virna Jandiroba
Gilbert Burns vs. TBA

Preliminary Card (ESPN 2/ESPN+, 5:30 PM ET)

Jim Miller vs. Jason Gonzalez
Jessica Penne vs. Jodie Esquibel
Court McGee vs. Dhiego Lima

 

[Gabe]

Understandable. ESPN does not want to waster airtime on Haermansson, who will likely get slaughtered.

 

[LockardTheGOAT]

That sounds like a promotion more than a demotion

 

[joeyjoejoe]

Jacare gets the shaft once again

 

[Fahcough]

No more PPVs on cable. Removing fight nights from cable

We paid attention to how shitty Game of Thrones ratings were being able to watch it on your couch with a remote. No way in hell we're going to make it that simple. Please submit $5 to get the rest of our opinion and a WMMA commercial.

 

[Zebra Cheeks]

I understand why two grapplers who haven’t even been champs before wouldn’t be what you’d want to spend air time on

 

[Bboy]

I'm not shocked but it's really no one's fault. I mean the original fight was Yoel Romero vs. Paulo Costa. Now we have Jacare vs. Hermansson, which is loads better than Jacare vs. Camozzi 3.

 

[Post 2 Decision]

ESPN run by casuals obviously

 

[Kenny Powerth]

Odds makers are giving Jack a lot of credit on the odds:

Jack +135
Jacare -165

https://www.bestfightodds.com/

 

[El General]

Y’all have no clue who Jack Hermansson is do you?

 

[Deleted member 436105]

Y’all have no clue who Jack Hermansson is do you?

That’s not the problem. The point is ESPN doesn’t and has shown no effort to care

 

[BEATDOWNS]

That’s not the problem. The point is ESPN doesn’t and has shown no effort to care

That's pretty dumb to drop a card down because of one guy. When did Romero become a ratings superstar?

Really doesn't matter much to me as they both air on TSN here.

War Jack My Boy!!!!!

 

[Chad W]

I don't blame them. Jacare/Hermansson is not a ESPN caliber main event, especially that timeslot on a saturday night. will likely air nba playoffs instead

how do you go from Cain/Ngannou & Gaethje/Barboza to Jacare/Hermansson, and then back to Woodley/Lawler. Obviously one of those events doesn't belong

 

[magicmarker]

That's pretty dumb to drop a card down because of one guy. When did Romero become a ratings superstar?

Really doesn't matter much to me as they both air on TSN here.

War Jack My Boy!!!!!

Two guys.

Both of the main event fighters are gone. UFC is lucky they didn’t just take it out behind the barn and put the whole card out of it’s misery.

 

[pick999]

Lol Hardy comain

 

[PicoPulse]

No skin off my bones

 

[Sausage_Carius]

There are so many fighters and not everyone is a name even if one half a major bout is. I was wondering how ESPN would eventually handle a card like this and there it is. It will be interesting to see future cards based on main/co-main. Wonder how much of it has to do with insane number crunching like what UFC does with fighter's social media.

 

[BEATDOWNS]

Two guys.

Both of the main event fighters are gone. UFC is lucky they didn’t just take it out behind the barn and put the whole card out of it’s misery.

Wat two guys? Jacare is still on the card. They literally moved it because of Yoel and that is crazy

 

[GiSP]

That's pretty dumb to drop a card down because of one guy. When did Romero become a ratings superstar?

Really doesn't matter much to me as they both air on TSN here.

War Jack My Boy!!!!!

Romero has always gotten a lot of advantages from the UFC and their confederates. Maybe it has something to do with that.

 

[Matthew Fedler]

I’m taking this as a positive sign about the flexibility of the ESPN deal. My hope is that a PPV like UFC 234 would more easily be converted into a regular ESPN+ show on short notice.