The UFC has been showing on ESPN in Ireland & UK for the past couple of years, but it looks as thought the UFC ESPN relationship has soured.

In the past ESPN showed all the UFC numbered card prelims but over the last few months they have stopped, leaving Irish and UK fans stuck without prelims.

UFC owner Lorenzo Fertitta revealed via twitter that the UFC are “not happy with espn” after being asked “what channel will get the UFC in the UK when the ESPN deal is up?” by @lethers71

The sport could leap in popularity if the UFC could secure a deal with SKY Sports (number 1 sports network in UK&IRE).

Sky Sports News is a very popular 24 hour sports news channel, but at the moment they don’t cover MMA (or the UFC) at all, but if they were to acquire the rights to the programming then surely hours of Cricket news coverage would turn into MMA news coverage.