Steve Garcia will open up Sunday night’s UFC Freedom 250 event against Diego Lopes, and based on past experiences, the seven-fight unbeaten featherweight has his concerns about the fact that the event is taking place outdoors on the lawn of the White House.
“I’ve fought outdoors twice… The first outdoor fight was at night, I dealt with the bugs,” Garcia said on The Ariel Helwani Show.
“It was back in my amateur days; all the lights in the back had to get shifted forward to the Octagon, and we had no lights in the back to warm up… But it wasn’t terrible.”
“The second time was definitely hotter, probably around 85 degrees. We fought at the State Fair grounds in Albuquerque; it was my pro debut. They had to continue to throw ice on the canvas. That’s probably the only thing I’m a little nervous about—how well the Octagon is covered. because it got so hot that everybody was burning their feet. They were dumping tubs of ice all over the canvas, and then they had to sweep it up so nobody would slip and fall. It was a little crazy. If you were on your back in guard or something, you were burning your back. That’s definitely not a fun way to fight.”
Even just a few days out from the event the weather forecasts for the day of the event continue to shift.
A worst case scenario of thunderstorms was predicted earlier in the week, which could have put the event in jeopardy, while depending on which source you go to the most recent predictions range between sunny to showers, with weather.com still suggesting scattered thunderstorms are a possibility earlier in the day.
One thing most predictors seem to agree on at the time of writing is that it is going to be exceptionally hot by the time the event gets underway at 8pm ET on Sunday night, with estimates of around 30 degrees celsius / 86 degrees farenheit.
