UFC Abandons Plans For January Pay-Per-View Event

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UFC 208 will no longer be taking place on January 21st in Anaheim, California the promotion has announced.

Instead, UFC 208 will now take place in Brooklyn, New York on February 11th instead, with Anaheim now scheduled to host a PPV event in August instead.

The change means there won’t be a PPV in January, leaving just two events in the first month of the year: UFC Fight Night 103: Rodriguez Vs Penn on January 15th in Pheonix, Arizona and UFC On FOX 23 on January 28th from Denver, Colorado.

According to the LA Times, the reason for the delay is that there was a lack of champions available to fight on the originally scheduled January 21st show.

This is partly a hangover from the UFC’s ambitious line-ups for it’s recent marquee events, with UFC 205 in November having an unprecedented three title fights, while UFC 207 at the end of December will have two.

At one stage it had looked as if middleweight champion Michael Bisping was the most likely candidate to headline the show against Yoel Romero, but a knee injury will keep him out of action until at least March.

A major beneficiary of the UFC’s decision to pull back from the January 21st event will be Bellator, who’s 170th event is also set to take place in California that night with a high profile main event featuring Chael Sonnen’s return against Tito Ortiz.

Due to the change, the previously announced UFC 210 event in Las Vegas on March 4th now becomes UFC 209.

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