LAS VEGAS – For the ninth straight event, the UFC will air preliminary card fights on its Facebook page.
Saturday's live finale of Season 13 of "The Ultimate Fighter" will feature six bouts at the social networking online giant leading in to the main card, which will air on Spike TV. The UFC made the announcement on its Twitter account an hour after Friday's weigh-in event for the Saturday card.
Leading the charge will be a lightweight bout between Jeremy Stephens and Danny Downes, plus a featherweight contest between Josh Grispi and George Roop.
In addition, a pair of fights between TUF 13 welterweight contestants lands in the middle of the prelims when Shamar Bailey takes on Ryan McGillivray and Clay Harvison meets Justin Edwards.
Scott Jorgensen, in his first fight since losing a unanimous decision to Dominick Cruz in a December bantamweight title fight in the WEC's swan song, returns to face Ken Stone. And Reuben Duran fights Francisco Rivera.
To gain access to the fights, which will begin at 6:30 p.m. Eastern, viewers must "like" the UFC on Facebook. As of Friday afternoon, the UFC had more than 5.6 million fans at the site.
The UFC began streaming preliminary fights in January with its Fight for the Troops 2 show at Fort Hood, Texas. Since then, the promotion has included free Facebook fights for each event, regardless of the main card's platform – be it on pay-per-view, Spike or the Versus cable station. For the historic UFC 129 card in Toronto in April, five prelims were aired on Facebook, followed by a pair on Spike leading into the pay-per-view – meaning for the first time, fans were guaranteed the opportunity to see each fight on the card. That continued for last week's UFC 130 with three Facebook prelims, a pair of Spike prelims and a five-bout main card pay-per-view.
The main card for the TUF 13 Finale begins at 9 p.m. Eastern on Spike and features a main event between this season's welterweight finalists, Ramsey Nijem and Tony Ferguson. In addition, a lightweight contenders fight between Anthony Pettis, the last 155-pound champion in WEC history before the merger with the UFC, and Clay Guida could determine the next challenger for the lightweight title – after champion Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard recover from injuries that delayed their scheduled rematch.
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