BELFAST, Northern Ireland – It's hard for anyone in this town to not be aware that the UFC has arrived. There are billboards, posters and advertisements everywhere for UFC 72, which will be held Saturday at Odyssey Arena.

Those arriving by air are greeted by a large billboard featuring the faces of main event fighters Rich Franklin and Yushin Okami, as well as Forrest Griffin. Smaller ads promoting the bout adorn the baggage carousels.

But the UFC hasn't been as warmly embraced by the fans in Northern Ireland as it has been at its recent shows in England and in the U.S.

Though there are plenty of fans wearing UFC merchandise in evidence around town, the crowd at the weigh-in Friday was decidedly smaller than average.

UFC weigh-ins have become an event unto themselves, drawing as many as 5,000 fans. But the crowd at the Odyssey Arena for the UFC 72 weigh-in was no more than 1,500 and was hardly the over-the-top enthusiastic gatherings that greeted the fighters at events in Las Vegas,

BELFAST, Northern Ireland – Rory Singer's travel arrangements were different than those of most of the fighters who are competing in UFC 72 on Saturday at Odyssey Arena.

Most of the fighters stressed about the travel time from the U.S., calculated the impact it would have on their training and nutritional schedules and made elaborate plans to minimize the impact of jet lag.

Singer, though, intentionally made his travel time longer. And, he says, he loved it.

"Awesome. Absolutely awesome," he said of a decision to fly into Dublin, Ireland, instead of directly to Belfast.

Once he reached Dublin, he took a two-hour train ride to Belfast, where he was able to enjoy the scenery.

"The countryside was gorgeous and getting to see that was worth the trip in and of itself," said Singer, a middleweight with title aspirations who will face Jason MacDonald in a three-round bout Saturday on the pay-per-view card.

Singer holds a degree from the University of Georgia in biological engineering and was

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Rich Franklin has been one of the UFC’s most dominant fighters, but needs a win Saturday over Yushin Okami at Odyssey Arena to get another shot at middleweight champion Anderson Silva. Here’s what he’ll need to do to get it and here’s how Okami can pull the upset:

BELFAST, Northern Ireland – Colin Robinson is big and thick and has the grizzled look of a longshoreman.

He's not the kind of guy who's likely to make an appearance on "Dancing with the Stars." Light on the feet, he's not. He's thunder without the lightning.

Or, precisely, he's the type of fighter who amateur boxing is prejudiced against, with its computerized scoring system that relies more on quick, flicking punches rather than powerful, concussion-inducing shots.

It was that prejudice that ended what Robinson calls his love affair with boxing.

"I became pretty disillusioned with it, to be honest with you, with the scoring and all," Robinson said. "There were too many rules and regulations, with the (required) headgear and all, to suit me."

He shoved aside any thought of winning an Irish heavyweight title and prepared to move on with his life. And then, as a 34-year-old, he discovered mixed martial arts and, he says, his life was changed.

And it will continue to change Saturday when

BELFAST, Northern Ireland – When Rich Franklin got in from a workout Thursday, he had a meal he prepared for himself consisting of ground chicken, ground turkey, broccoli and dry oatmeal.

When he left a news conference later in the day, he ate a concoction of ground chicken, ground turkey, broccoli and dry oatmeal. For dinner, he had ground chicken, ground turkey, broccoli and dry oatmeal.

He had the same thing on June 3 and May 26 and, he says, chuckling, six times a day for every day of his training camp.

It's part of what the ex-UFC middleweight champion calls a scientific approach to nutrition and cutting weight.

Franklin, who fights Yushin Okami in a three-round bout at UFC 72 Saturday at the Odyssey Arena with a shot at middleweight champion Anderson Silva on the line, leaves little to chance in his pre-fight preparations.

A one-time high school math teacher who has a Bachelor's degree in mathematics and a Master's degree in education from the University of Cincinnati, Franklin

Jamal Patterson has a full-time job and another which might as well be. He doesn’t have a lot of time for what you might consider recreational activities.

But Patterson, a one-time defensive back at Colgate, is having the time of his life fighting in the IFL. He is a member of the IFL’s New York Pitbulls, who take on the Toronto Dragons in one of two season-ending games Saturday at the Las Vegas Hilton. In the other, the Nevada Lions face the Tucson Scorpions.

Patterson, who starred in wrestling as well as football while he was in high school, got so serious so quickly about mastering jiu-jitsu that he flew to Brazil to learn it, Gracie-style. He earned a black belt, which is no insignificant achievement, and has adapted so well to mixed martial arts that Pitbulls coach Renzo Gracie is convinced he could someday be the finest fighter in the world.

“The (jiu-jitsu) came so naturally to him, I thought he had started it as a kid,” Gracie said of Patterson, who began taking jiu-jitsu

BELFAST, Northern Ireland – Watching Tyson Griffin fight is like watching the bareback event in rodeo: When the bell rings, he’s going to shoot out of his corner in a barely controlled fury.

Griffin’s game is full of passion and fire, which makes it a bit of a surprise to discover how mellow he is.

The 23-year-old, who recently moved to Las Vegas from Sacramento, Calif., so he could train with UFC heavyweight champion Randy Couture, is building a reputation as one of the game’s best.

Just don’t expect him to be the one to point it out.

“My job is to fight,” said Griffin, who is 8-1 but is coming off a Feb. 3 loss to Frank Edgar at UFC 67 in Las Vegas. “How well I do it, that’s up to the fans or the (media) to decide. All I do is fight.” They’ll get a chance to judge on Saturday when he takes on promising Clay Guida in a three-round lightweight bout at UFC 72 at Odyssey Arena.

He’s a natural athlete who played baseball (catcher and third baseman), hockey (goalie), football (running

Listen to Phil Baroni talk for only a few seconds and you know instantly why his nickname is the "New York Bad Ass."

You might get the impression he eats nails for dessert and wrestles Rottweilers for laughs. The truth is nothing that extreme, but Baroni has a lot of anger inside that heavily muscled body of his.

And these days, most of that anger is directed toward Frank Shamrock, whom he will fight in San Jose, Calif., on a June 22 pay-per-view card.

Baroni, who has a 10-7 mixed martial arts record and victories over stalwarts such as Yuki Kondo and Dave Menne, doesn't think much of Shamrock, and he makes that point very clear and very quickly.

"He's (an expletive) little fraud who tries to pass himself off as a fighter, but anyone who knows the business knows he's (an expletive expletive)," Baroni said.

And that was before he got warmed up.

Baroni said he is angry that Shamrock began criticizing him even though Shamrock has largely avoided significant competition for many years.