I hope this post will stay up as I found an interesting tidbit about UFC fights on ESPN+

One of my favorite parts about UFC events are the walkout songs and some of them are extremely memorable for one reason or another. A few memorable ones for example are Darren Till walk out to Sweet Caroline at UFC Liverpool, Stipe walkout to Till I Die at a UFC PPV in Cleveland etc.

One of my favorites ones was Aljamain Sterling walkout at UFC 250 when he fought Cory Sandhagen. I watched the fight live and I remember his entrance and he walked out to “I love” by Joyner Lucas. I like Joyner Lucas and this was during COVID times so something about the empty arena and the song with Aljo’s vibe made it memorable for me

Fast forward to today, I was watching Aljo’s old fights on ESPN+ in preparation for the PPV this weekend and I wanted to go back and watch the walkout/fight against Sandhagen. Much to my dismay, Aljo was making his entrance to some other generic song. My brain froze. I thought I lived in an alternate reality and was confusing which PPV/event it was that he walked out to that song. I checked to see which other PPV/events Aljo was on after that song came out. I went on a binge and watched every single Aljo entrance since that song came out and him walking out to “I love” was nowhere to be found. At this point, I was certain I’m losing my mind.

My next step was to Google “Aljamain Sterling walkout songs” and the search showed that he walked out to that song at least for 3 of his fights (some were mixed with other songs). I went back again to ESPN+ and watched all the walkouts for the events the websites mentioned and still nothing.

At this point, it clicked to me. Did the UFC/ESPN+ not want to pay for the song to be constantly played everytime someone goes back to watch his entrance/fights? I wondered how many other entrance/songs were replaced with generic music.

First to prove this, I tried to find a replay of the UFC 250 PPV online in one of those streaming website to see if I was correct. I tried many but ultimately found one that still had the videos of the PPV main card and guess what, Aljo indeed walked out to “I love” by Joyner Lucas at UFC 250 against Cory Sandhagen. UFC/ESPN+ just replaced this music with some other generic music, the reason I can only presume to be cost/copyright related.

Thanks UFC/ESPN+ for ruining my experience and wasting an hour of my life

The end.