'UFC Fight Night 102: On the Ground,' from Albany: Big beasts on the little card that could

ALBANY, N.Y. – The UFC has back-to-back shows this week, but the front end seems to have been swallowed up by the shadow of Saturday’s pay-per-view in Toronto.

Tonight at Times Union Center in Albany, N.Y., UFC Fight Night 102 goes down with some heavy hitters on the main card – and some new drama on the prelims. The entire event streams on UFC Fight Pass.

Tonight’s main card features two heavyweight fights and two light heavyweight bouts – and that means an average of 232 pounds of gun-slinging fun. In the main event, Derrick Lewis (16-4 MMA, 7-2 UFC) meets Shamil Abdurakhimov (17-3 MMA, 2-1 UFC). The co-feature is fellow heavyweights Anthony Hamilton (15-5 MMA, 3-3 UFC) and Francis Ngannou (8-1 MMA, 3-0 UFC). Below them, 205ers Corey Anderson (8-2 MMA, 5-2 UFC) and Sean O’Connell (17-8 MMA, 2-4 UFC), plus Saparbek Safarov (8-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC) and Gian Villante (14-7 MMA, 4-3 UFC), do battle.

But it occurred to us that we have an informal battle of “beasts” on the main card with Lewis – “The Black Beast” – and Anderson – “Beastin’ 25/8” – looking for some unofficial nickname supremacy. We asked them who’s more beastly and unearthed some fresh info.

At Thursday’s official weigh-ins, there was drama between lightweights Marc Diakiese (10-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC) and Frankie Perez (10-2 MMA, 1-1 UFC), who laid hands on each other and needed to be separated before Perez told Diakiese he was going to smack the mohawk off his head tonight.

Check out the video above so MMAjunkie can get you ready for UFC Fight Night 102 from “On the Ground” in Albany.

And for more on UFC Fight Night 102, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.