To kick off its new business partnership with Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), Microsoft was kind enough to give away the UFC 141: "Lesnar vs. Overeem" pay-per-view (PPV) for FREE to the first 30,000 fight fans who subscribed to Xbox Live and downloaded the UFC App for streaming the Dec. 30 fight card.

Unfortunately, they didn't deliver.

As our own Sergio Hernandez illustrated in this post, the influx of requests became too much for the servers to handle, leaving most fans with nothing more than an error message and a night full of frustration.

Now Microsoft (via Bit Mob) is ready to make amends:

"The broadcast of UFC 141 through the UFC for Xbox LIVE application was hampered by technical issues appearing in the hours leading up to the fight. Despite restoring service to some users during the course of UFC 141, there is a great deal of room for improvement. All 30,000 users who registered to view UFC 141 for free will be provided access to a future fight at no cost."



"We want to ensure that the 30,000 giveaway recipients for UFC 141 have an optimal experience with UFC on Xbox LIVE, and we are currently working with our partners at the UFC to ensure we deliver just that. The gamertags of the 30,000 users who registered for UFC 141 are being safely kept on file for free access to a future UFC event, and we will have more updates to share in the near future."

To make it up to those fans left out in the cold -- and assuredly to save face on the public relations front -- they have announced that a future UFC event will be offered for free for those who signed up for UFC 141, but were unable to watch.

No timetable has been identified at this point, as it will probably take some time to make sure they avoid a repeat of this recent disaster.

Stay tuned.

For more on UFC on Xbox Live click here. To catch up on all the UFC 141 stories click here.