Why Neil Seery deserves a main card spot at UFC Belfast

UFC Fight Night in Belfast is shaping up to be a fun card of fights in Northern Ireland, but there’s one key change I’d like to see the UFC make to the fight card ahead of the event.

Bump the Ian McCall v Neil Seery fight up to the main card.

The fight features one of the world’s top flyweights in McCall, and one of Europe’s best in Seery, who has announced the Belfast bout will be his last.

Purely on merit, that matchup deserves to be scheduled higher up the fight card than the heavyweight bout between Timothy Johnson and Alexander Volkov, which currently occupies a main card slot.

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But given the fact it’s also Seery’s final fight, why not give ‘2 Tap’ a little shine and bump him up to the main card.

For the rest of the world, card placement will matter little with the whole event being streamed exclusively on UFC Fight Pass.

But here in the UK and Ireland the main card will be aired live on television on BT Sport.

Giving Seery a televised send-off would be just reward for a veteran fighter who always delivers the goods on fight night.

For my money, he should be the co-main event.

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Time to bin off Reebok?

With WME-IMG looking to cut costs and streamline their business ahead of 2017, it’s unrealistic to expect fighter pay to suddenly start going up across the board.

But there could be one way the new UFC owners could help increase fighters’ pay packets without physically having to pay them extra each time they step into the Octagon – write off the Reebok deal.

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I’m sure there are certain brand benefits from having a buttoned-up, uniform look to the fighters as they make their way to the Octagon on fight night.

But the promotional benefits of that would surely now be dwarfed by the marketing power of the new owners themselves.

And the amount of bad feeling generated by the deal, which has effectively reduced the fighters’ ability to earn additional revenue, has reached a point where the UFC’s top brass must surely be assessing the relevance of the deal to their future plans.

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Kitted up: British UFC star Michael Bisping working out in the UFC Reebok fight kit[/caption]

It’s entirely possible there’s a clause in the contract to allow either party the opportunity to call an end to the contract early.

And while it might cost them a few bucks to do so, with fighters reneging against the deal (see Fabricio Werdum) and others seemingly unable to re-sign for the promotion because of pre-existing deals with Reebok’s competitors (see Georges St-Pierre), the benefits of cutting ties might just outweigh the benefits of staying the course.