Dana White has been pressing ahead with plans to go ahead with the UFC 249 event on April 18th and is now claiming he has secured a location for the show.
“I do [have a venue],” White confirmed during an Instagram Live chat for Yahoo! Sports. “I’m not ready to tell you yet. I know lots of things. There’s not going to be any fans there. It’s going to be a closed event.”
White has also confirmed that the plan is for there to be a full fight card for the event, not just the eagerly awaited headliner between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson.
“Everybody who is going to be involved in this thing is going to be because they want to be, not because they have to be or they have to do anything,” White said. “Believe me: We didn’t just start thinking about safety when the coronavirus popped up. Health and safety, these are things that normal businesses that are out there right now don’t necessarily have to think about on a daily basis. Healthy and safety is something we’ve been doing long before the coronavirus and we’ll be doing it long after the coronavirus is gone. This is just normal [expletive] for us.”
While MMA fans will no doubt be excited at the possibility that the event really will go ahead, a lot can still change in the coming weeks, and with virtually all other sporting events already shut down, there could yet be a major backlash against the UFC if this show does go ahead.
