United Kingdom MMA fans were left outraged over the weekend after Channel 5 cut away from Bellator 206, replacing the main event fight between Rory MacDonald and Gegard Mousasi for a scheduled episode of animated children's show Peppa Pig.
Per Independent, the bill from San Jose was packed with 13 fights, including a three-hour, six-fight main card that went past 6 a.m. UK time – resulting in the switch over to Peppa Pig.
Bellator senior vice president David Schwartz said in a post-fight press conference the change was unavoidable.
"It's government regulation that at 6 a.m. that content was not suitable so they had to switch to children's programming," Schwartz explained. "Peppa the pig, yes."
While Bellator cards are rarely televised in the UK, Bellator president Scott Coker said the company will rework its scheduling to better include UK audiences in the future.
"I think that when I think about the replay, I think that we can probably work it out," Coker said. "But it's six in the morning on a Sunday there and we won't be able to work this out until Sunday our time, Monday their time. But we are working on it.
Programming ran longer than intended because of a last-minute decision to include a bout between Gaston Bolanos and Ysidro Gutierrez.
"Believe me, when it switched over there were a lot of texts going back and forth and they all were not friendly," Coker said. "We were trying to fix it, we thought it was a technical glitch. But it wasn't, it was a governmental issue. I can promise you the next time it's not going to happen. We'll keep it down to five fights instead of six — like we normally do — and we tried to overdeliver for the fans and we just went over. It's an unfortunate situation."
One viewer, taking to Twitter to share a photo of the Peppa Pig title card where the fight should be, said the switch was "like some sort of sick joke."
"I stayed up til 6AM for Channel 5 to cut off Bellator main event," wrote one angry Twitter user in caps, tagging Channel 5's Twitter account with a caps-locked "WTF."