– Niall Kelly reports from Boston

THE UFC ISN’T the only show in town this weekend. 

Truth be told, it isn’t even the biggest.

As the first fights get underway at TD Garden on Sunday evening, the eyes of the city — and of sports fans across America — will be firmly fixed on events 20 miles away in nearby Foxborough.

The New England Patriots host the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Championship game. The winners will progress to the Super Bowl where they face either the Green Bay Packers or the Seattle Seahawks in Arizona on 1 February.

The knock-on effect on the UFC card won’t be known until the gate is counted. Despite the large number of Irish fans who have travelled to support Conor McGregor, Cathal Pendred, Paddy Holohan and Norman Parke, tickets were still freely available in fight week.

The Patriots are strong favourites to see off the Colts and clinch the sixth AFC Championship of the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick era, as well as take the penultimate step towards a fourth Super Bowl for one of the game’s most famous quarterback/coach combos.

“The expectation is absolutely that they win this game on Sunday,” Shaughnessy added.

“After that you’ll have a lot of boosters and confident fans but it’s not going to be anything like the confidence people have for this game.

“Not many people want to come out and say Indianapolis have no chance but in my view, they have no chance.

“I think the Patriots will be underdogs if they’re facing Seattle in the Super Bowl, not unanimously favoured by any means. It’s a matter of getting to the game and then we start over with what we think.”

The Colts have experienced a resurgence with third-season quarterback Andrew Luck under centre, and clinched their return to the conference finale with a win against the Denver Broncos and their legendary QB Peyton Manning last week.

It deprived the media of another high-stakes installment of the classic rivalry between two future Hall of Famers in Manning and Brady, and gave the build-up to Sunday’s game a completely different slant.

“It’s a little hard to drum up any kind of a rivalry or storyline between these two because Andrew Luck is only in his third year and the teams aren’t really considered a close match. The average score the last three times they played is 48-22 and those are three recent games.

“Luck is a great young quarterback but he’s yet to demonstrate that he can beat New England. Maybe this will be the one and that will change the dynamic and we’ll have a rivalry. But until proven, he’s considered not quite ready for the magnitude of this game.

“There’s the emergence of Luck as a Championship-calibre quarterback, there’s the unexpected nature of the Colts being in this game,” Shaughnessy says of the coverage this week, “but most of it has been the coronation of the Patriots’ greatness and here they are again in the fourth straight AFC Championship game, Belichick and Brady.”

Boston’s remarkable period of success since the turn of the century with eight national titles across the big four sports — American football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey — has seen it dubbed the City of Champions.

Sunday night should be the night when Conor McGregor rubberstamps his own credentials with a win against Dennis Siver but for most of the locals, there’s only one matchup worth talking about.

“We’re very spoiled,” Shaughnessy said.

“We’ve had a lot of these, and a lot of Super Bowls, but for them to qualify for the Super Bowl again gives the region a two-week boost where they talk about it, people make trips out to Arizona and people feel good about themselves.

“Right now, the Red Sox just finished last again and the Celtics are almost irrelevant so to have the football team stand up and be so vital and so Championship-driven again, it’s going to be a good time around here.”