The UFC returns to England this Saturday with UFC on Fuel TV 5: Struve vs. Miocic. The main event features two unique prospects in the heavyweight division as Stefan Struve will look to become the first man to defeat Stipe Miocic. Both men were victorious at UFC 146 this past May with Struve submitting Lavar Johnson in the first round and Miocic earning a 2^nd round TKO victory over Shane Del Rosario.

The co-main event has Dan Hardy who is literally fighting around the block from his house, facing Amir Sadollah. Hardy halted a four fight losing streak at UFC 146 when he knocked out Duane Ludwig. Sadollah has been out of action since defeating Jorge Lopez in May. The fans will surely go nuts once Hardy’s music hits and offer the Brit a huge home field advantage.

The rest of the card will see 9 British fighters performing including Tom Watson who will make his UFC debut against Brad Tavares. Che Mills faces Ludwig, Brad Pickett takes on Yves Jabouin and Paul Sass will look to add Matt Wiman to his list of submission victims. Sass has all 13 of his bouts with 12 coming by way of tapout including 11 of them in the first round.

Let’s take a look at which fighters need a victory on Saturday or face the dreaded phone call from Joe Silva telling them their services are no longer needed.

Kyle Kingsbury:

After losing to Tom Lawlor on The Ultimate Fighter Finale 8, Kingsbury went on to win his next four fights. Victories over Fabio Maldonado and Jared Hamman netted the 30-year-old Kingsbury Fight of the Night honors, but things haven’t gone well for him as of late. After suffering a unanimous decision loss to Stephan Bonnar at UFC 139, Kingsbury was chosen to help introduce Glover Teixeira to the UFC fans.

The fight did not last very long as Teixeira battered Kingsbury on the feet before submitting him with an arm-triangle choke just 1:53 into the first round. With two straight losses Kingsbury can ill afford to lose again. He faces Jimi Manuwa who is making his UFC debut after fighting in various British promotions. Manuwa is 11-0 with 10 wins coming by knockout. He has only been out of the first round twice in his four year career.

As popular and funny as Kingsbury is he has to win here. Fighting in the UFC’s light heavyweight division, he knows there will never be any easy fights and now he has to face another tough opponent looking to make an example out of him and introduce themselves to the UFC fans and executives. These two will meet in the main event of the preliminary card; this could be the last time we see Kingsbury inside the Octagon for the time being.

This is the first time since I began writing this article that I only had one fighter on the list. DaMarques Johnson has three losses in his last four bouts, but took this fight against Gunnar Nelson on extremely short notice and is coming off a very tough, competitive and exciting fight against Mike Swick at UFC on Fox: Shogun vs. Vera in August.

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