Jon Anik Says He's Excited By The Potential of the UFC's Deal WIth ESPN

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The Ultimate Fighting Championship makes its official debut on ESPN+ this Saturday, and one of the organization’s busiest employees sees it as an exciting opportunity.

The UFC’s seven-year relationship with Fox ended in December, making way for a new broadcast partnership with sports giant ESPN. UFC play-by-play commentator Jon Anik says he’s excited about the much-anticipated move to the self-proclaimed “Worldwide Leader in Sports,” and what it can do for MMA in terms of exposure to new markets. The new deal will be a homecoming of sorts for Anik, who, previous to his job as play-by-play man for the UFC and before that, Bellator MMA, hosted a web series, “MMA Live,” that was picked up by ESPN and broadcast on cable in 2010-2011.

Anik was a guest on the latest episode of The MMA Hour and told host Luke Thomas the deal was something people in the sport have worked a long time to achieve.

“I think it’s exciting,” Anik said. “I think it’s very interesting that you’re going to have this great set of prelims on linear ESPN, and then all of a sudden people are going to realize that if you want to see Dillashaw and Cejudo, you’ve gotta either go on some device or if you’ve got one of those fancy TVs -- I think it’s going to be a transition for a lot of people.

"But big picture, I’m excited" Anik added. "When Francis Ngannou and Cain Velasquez fight on ESPN, with respect to Cain-JDS 1 on FOX and the launching of FS1 in 2013, and you know how much respect I have for those people, but a UFC Fight Night in prime time on ESPN, that’s been the goal since we started MMA Live in 2008. So, even if I wasn’t around for that, for a lot of us who were sort of grinding our gears at ESPN and getting nowhere in mixed martial arts setting back then, it’s like, mission accomplished. We’ve got a UFC fight night on ESPN? That’s what we’ve always been working for.”

UFC on ESPN+ 1, also known as UFC Fight Night 143, is headlined by a flyweight title fight between flyweight champ Henry Cejudo and bantamweight kingpin T.J. Dillashaw on Jan. 19, 2019 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Co-headlining the inaugural ESPN+ event will be a heavyweight slugfest between Greg Hardy and Allen Crowder.