Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president Dana White had already confirmed three events for this month and now he has revealed plans for a fight night in Las Vegas on 23 May.
Due to the coronavirus measures the mixed martial arts (MMA) organisation was forced to suspend its calendar. However, UFC 249 is now rescheduled for this Saturday (9 May) while cards are also planned for 13 May and 16 May.
The three events will be held behind closed doors in Jacksonville, Florida.
In a pre-UFC 249 interview with Sports Illustrated, White also revealed plans for Vegas later this month.
He said: “While everybody was f—— lying out by the pool, hanging out and doing whatever the f— they’re doing in quarantine, we were in here f—— grinding, man. Fighting crazy wars every day to put on this first event [UFC 249]. We pulled it off.
“We were gonna be able to hold this thing earlier, and they asked us to stand down. Now we’re going Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday. And I don’t think I’ve told anybody this yet: we’re gonna come back to Vegas and put on a fight 23 May.”
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Per Dana White, Fight Island will be operational by June. Octagon on the beach. Hotels for fighters to stay at while they are there. Once things go back to normal, Fight Island will likely get retired, but it’s a real piece of the promotions plans.
— Brett Okamoto (@bokamotoESPN) April 24, 2020
Fight Island in June
It’s been widely reported that UFC is proposing hosting events on “Fight Island” and the Daily Mail says White plans to have the private location operational by June.
Speaking to ESPN White revealed there will be an “octagon on the beach” and that the hotel and training facilities will be “top class”.
“Fight Island should be up and running in June,” White said last month. “So I should be able to start running international events in June.
“We really are putting an octagon on the beach. There’s going to be training facilities there for people. There are hotels. And the whole island is going to be built, all the infrastructure is going to be built for the UFC to come do fights there.”
Safety is not an issue
When asked by Sports Illustrated about safely hosting four cards between 9 and 23 May, White replied: “Then we’ll be on our regular schedule again and we’ll open up Fight Island, start doing international fights. Any fight that would’ve been in, like, Brazil or Canada will be on Fight Island.
“Listen, for a lot of these sports organisations, it’s: we need to go overboard on safety now. We go overboard on safety every weekend. We always have to figure out how we can make the next event as safe as possible for our fighters, the fans, our employees.
“This isn’t anything new for us. We have relationships with labs all over the country, hospitals and doctors. The coronavirus didn’t make us start worrying about f—— safety. We’ve been doing it for 20 years.”
UFC 249 takes place on Saturday 9 May in Jacksonville, Florida (Sunday 10 May at 3am for UK viewers). The headline fight is Tony Ferguson vs. Justin Gaethje.
Image: UFC logo (WikiMedia Commons)