If you live in Los Angeles or Seattle and want to see all of UFC 333, set the alarm before you go to bed Friday. The promotion returns to Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi on Saturday, Oct. 24. Because the United Arab Emirates runs on Gulf Standard Time, the Paramount+ broadcast lands squarely in the North American morning.
MMA Mania laid out the schedule on Wednesday. The early prelims start at 7 a.m. PT (10 a.m. ET), the late prelims follow at 9 a.m. PT (noon ET), and the main card begins at 11 a.m. PT (2 p.m. ET). East Coast viewers get the gentler deal, a late breakfast and a main card that starts after lunch. Out west, the first fights will go off while a lot of people are still looking for the coffee filters.
There’s an upside, and MMA Mania was quick to point it out. Most fans in the States will be finished by mid-to-late afternoon, with Saturday night still open for whatever they had planned.
What’s on the card
The headliner is a featherweight title fight. Alexander Volkanovski defends the 145-pound belt against Movsar Evloev, who arrives with an unbeaten record. That’s the kind of matchup a lot of people would happily lose sleep over, from either direction.
The co-main event might be the bigger draw for the hardcore crowd. Petr Yan puts his bantamweight title on the line against Merab Dvalishvili, who once held the same 135-pound belt. A sitting champion facing a former one in the same division usually brings plenty of history into the cage, and both men know exactly what that strap feels like.
The rest of the main card has some depth. At flyweight, Lone’er Kavanagh meets Ramazan Temirov. Alexander Volkov and Rizvan Kuniev share the heavyweight slot, and Aaron Pico faces Losene Keita at featherweight. The full prelim lineup hadn’t been detailed in the reports, beyond the fact that it starts at 10 a.m. Eastern.
My take: complaining about a 7 a.m. start is fair if you care about the early prelims, but I’ll take Volkanovski and Evloev in daylight with a full pot of coffee over watching a featherweight title fight at 1 a.m. with my eyes half shut. The bigger risk is people waking up late, catching the main card at 11 a.m. Pacific and missing whoever steals the show on the prelims. Abu Dhabi cards tend to reward the early risers. The first bout goes off at 7 a.m. Pacific on Saturday, Oct. 24.
