By Andrew Zuhosky
If you are a mixed martial arts fan, can you call yourself a true fan of the sport without a membership for the UFC’s Internet streaming service, UFC Fight Pass?
I guess you can call yourself a fan of MMA even without a UFC Fight Pass membership, but let me tell you, as a subscriber of Fight Pass for over a year myself, if you don’t have Fight Pass, you, my friend, are missing out on something fantastic.
UFC Fight Pass is completely worth it. Let me explain.
A UFC Fight Pass membership can be bought through one of three subscription plans: $7.99 a month for one year, $8.99 a month for six months, or a monthly $9.99 subscription plan. This will enable you access to live and archived UFC events throughout the UFC’s 23-plus year history.
In addition, UFC Fight Pass offers exclusive preliminary fights, dubbed “Fight Pass Prelims,” ahead of each FS1/ FOX UFC Fight Night and UFC pay-per-view event.
Moreover, UFC Fight Pass will present entire UFC Fight Night cards exclusive to its platform on occasion.
Most recently, Fight Pass streamed the March 17 UFC Fight Night 107 card in London, which saw heavyweight Jimi Manuwa defeat Corey Anderson by knockout in the main event.
A UFC Fight Pass subscription doesn’t guarantee you just events from the UFC. Other promotions will stream their events on the platform, as well.
In Feb. of 2016, Fight Pass expanded its coverage to include the GLORY Kickboxing promotion. Portions of GLORY events are streamed on Fight Pass with other fights being broadcast on ESPN’s platforms.
Also, UFC Fight Pass will stream the Eddie Bravo Invitational tournaments, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu submission-only event.
As far as international MMA events carried by Fight Pass, Cage Warriors, a British MMA promotion, Australia’s BRACE MMA and Japan’s Pancrase can all be found on the platform.
UFC Fight Pass will also stream cards from TITAN Fighting Championships, a Florida-based promotion.
The next TITAN FC card will be May 19 ’s TITAN FC 44, which features a possibly historic main event as Flyweight champion Jose “Shorty” Torres will attempt to become the first athlete in TITAN FC’s history to be champion in two different weight divisions concurrently when he squares off against Bantamweight champion Farkhad Sharipov for the Bantamweight title.
Additionally, Fight Pass offers events from Invicta Fighting Championships, an all-female MMA promotion, as well as the Alaska Fighting Championship and Canada’s TKO MMA and more, along with archived events from defunct MMA properties like Strikeforce.
Notably, a UFC Fight Pass subscription does not give you access to the pay-per-view main cards, although those can be purchased through a participating cable company or satellite provider or through ufc.tv.
It’s all worth it, in my opinion. From time to time, I’ll search what’s coming up on Fight Pass to see if there’s going to be anything they’ll be running on a given day or weekend. If they do, I’ll make a day or an evening of it.
I enjoy my Fight Pass subscription very much. As a fan of MMA for the last several years, having Fight Pass has really opened my eyes to the various MMA promotions throughout the world and helped me learn more about the sport as a whole.
Now, would I recommend UFC Fight Pass to one of my friends? Oh, you bet I would.
I’d ask them if they had Fight Pass and if they didn’t, I’d tell them that they’d need to subscribe immediately. If you like fighting and MMA, you need this subscription.