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[windmortal]

Spike TV to air UFC 111's Brown vs. Almeida, Diaz vs. Markham fights on "UFC Prelims"

by MMAjunkie.com Staff on Feb 22, 2010 at 11:15 am ET
As expected Spike TV returns with a "UFC Prelims" broadcast next month and airs UFC 111 fights of Matt Brown (11-7 MMA, 4-1 UFC) vs. Ricardo Almeida (11-3 MMA, 4-3 UFC) and Nate Diaz (11-5 MMA, 6-3 UFC) vs. Rory Markham (16-5 MMA, 1-1 UFC).

MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) previously reported that UFC and Spike TV officials planned to showcase the two preliminary-card fights during the live broadcast, and Spike TV today made it official.

The one-hour special precedes the pay-per-view main-card airing of UFC 111, which takes place March 27 at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.

This latest Spike TV special marks the third of 10 scheduled "UFC Prelim" programs in 2010.

Spike TV's most recent "UFC Prelim" show, which featured a pair of contests from this month's "UFC 109: Relentless" event, scored a series-high 1.7 million viewers, which topped the 1.5 million who tuned in for January's UFC 108 event. The UFC first offered a PPV teaser broadcast for UFC 103, when the UFC went head-to-head with a boxing PPV broadcast featuring Floyd Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez.

Brown recently scored a TKO victory over "The Ultimate Fighter 9" winner James Wilks at UFC 105. The "TUF 7" cast member is now 4-1 in the UFC, and the lone loss came to undefeated Dong Hyun Kim via close split decision. After suffering a disappointing split-decision loss to Patrick Cote in July 2008, Almeida, who's now in his second stint with the UFC, has since bounced back with back-to-back wins over Matt Horwich and Kendall Grove. The former middleweight now heads to the welterweight division with nine wins in his past 10 fights.

Diaz, meanwhile, most recently competed at UFC Fight Night 20, where he met Gray Maynard in the main event of the Jan. 11 card. "The Ultimate Fighter 5" winner dropped a close split decision and has now lost three of his past four fights (two via split decision and one via unanimous decision). He now moves up a weight class to fight Markham, a former International Fight League welterweight standout who most recently appeared at UFC 95, where he lost via knockout to now-top contender Dan Hardy. Markhman made his octagon debut at UFC Fight Night 14 in 2008, when he scored a highlight-reel head-kick KO of Brodie Farber to win a "Knockout of the Night" bonus.

The full UFC 111 card now includes:

MAIN CARD

• Champ Georges St-Pierre vs. Dan Hardy (for welterweight title)
• Shane Carwin vs. Frank Mir (for interim heavyweight title)
• Jake Ellenberger vs. Ben Saunders
• Thiago Alves vs. Jon Fitch
• Mark Bocek vs. Jim Miller

PRELIMINARY CARD (Spike TV)

• Nate Diaz vs. Rory Markham
• Ricardo Almeida vs. Matt Brown

PRELIMINARY CARD

• Fabricio Camoes vs. Kurt Pellegrino
• Jared Hamman vs. Rodney Wallace
• Tomasz Drwal vs. Rousimar Palhares
• Ricardo Funch vs. Matthew Riddle

For complete coverage of UFC 111, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of MMAjunkie.com.

[Vegas]

Good to hear, I thought those 2 fights should have been on the main card. Very interested to see Diaz at 170, moving to 170 has been great for Nick, wonder if Nate can be a contender at 170 as well?