Playwright’s tavern up on 47th and Broadway always has the fights and is a great bar with Brooklyn Lager on tap and excellent food.

It’s actually on 49th, but yeah, I tend to go there for the most part when I see UFC cards (if you go in early enough, say around 7:30 or 8 PM, they usually don’t even charge you $20 entry as it’s “too early”). I’ll be there this Saturday, I think. Anyone else planning to go there?

Ahh…I stand corrected. From my understanding, the Canadian equivalent is the “NFL Season Ticket” which includes pretty much every game under the sun and the NFL Network as well. At least that’s how I understood it, but another Canadian that bigtime into NFL feel free to point out the error of my ways.

I do know that Dana himself has admitted they don’t like directly competing with the NFL (in an interview about moving TUF to a new night). So I imagine he’s less than pleased to hear this news.

When the Pats game is on, I will no doubt be watching either a re-broadcast of an earlier soccer match on Setanta or “Flip This House” or something my wife would watch.

Then it’s time for UFC 79….

This means that when I fire up my television on Saturday night, I’ll have ten different channels that I can tune to and see the Patriots and Giants.

Happy fun time, a really great use of valuable digital bandwidth.

The problem is more that the NFL has been having a pissing contest with certain cable companies, which should surprise no one who has ever read anything about cable companies.

That being said, I am surprised at how underwhelming the buildup to UFC 79 has been. There hasn’t been much advertising at all, no buzz, no push, no nothing. I know UFC has lost a lot of money due to their Euro expansion and buying Pride (both are big mistakes IMO, the latter obviously much moreso than the former), and perhaps they are trying to cut costs, but this would seem like a curious way to do it; why would you intentionally not advertise your biggest show of the year? Is Dana afraid to see either Chuck or Vanderlei lose 3 in a row? Whoever loses that fight (probably by crushing KO) is probably finished as a potential main eventer; Silva, for all his savagery and skills, hasn’t even gotten a warmup match to show the American fans what he is capable of before he is tossed into the fire. And the Pride tape collection has been worth fucking nothing, because for whatever reason the UFC is scared to show more than 3 seconds at a time from any of his fights, or to talk about how badly he dominated (the rarely seen) UFC champ Rampage.

The only way the game will effect the PPV is if the game is close thoughtout and similar to the game the Pats had with The Ravens on monday which got the huge rating. But the chances of the happening are slim.