The main card featured
Welterweight Champion Pat Miletich defending his title against
John Alessio, and
Heavyweight Champion Kevin Randleman defending his title against
Pedro Rizzo. The Heavyweight Championship bout was first scheduled to take place at
UFC 24, but was rescheduled due to a backstage accident involving Kevin Randleman, who slipped and fell on the concrete floor, sustaining a concussion. A
bantamweight division was added at UFC 26 for fighters under 155 pounds;
Jens Pulver defeated
Joao Roque in the first ever UFC
bantamweight bout.
Lightweight was now 155-169.9 pounds,
Middleweight 170-199.9 pounds, and
Heavyweight 200+ pounds. This was the fourth event to feature now-regular referee,
Mario Yamasaki in addition to
"Big" John McCarthy. UFC 26 featured the second appearance of
Matt Hughes in the UFC, who would go on to dominate the
welterweight division. The event also marked the second UFC appearance of British fighter
Ian Freeman, whose preliminary bout was shown on the live pay per view broadcast. UFC 26 was the fourth straight UFC event to have never received a
home video or
DVD release in the United States, as the UFC's parent company SEG was incurring financial difficulties, and would eventually sell the company to
Zuffa just six months later. Zuffa eventually released UFC 26 on DVD as part of an anthology collection of UFC 21-30. ==Results==