White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, has positioned U.F.C. 249 for a prime spotlight — as the first major U.S. sporting event since the coronavirus shutdown.
When Tony Ferguson and Justin Gaethje step into the octagon Saturday night in Jacksonville, Fla., their interim lightweight title bout will be the climax of U.F.C. 249, the biggest sporting event to take place in the United States in almost two months.
ONE Championship teamed up with longtime partner Global Citizen to broadcast ‘One World: Together At Home,’ a global music special featuring exclusive performances, words of encouragement from A-list celebrities, and more.
While Conor McGregor has been urging an abundance of caution over travel and social distancing for the citizens of Ireland, he’s also inserted himself fully into the discourse involving Khabib Nurmagomedov’s potential withdrawal from the main event of UFC 249. After attempting to travel to the UAE to prepare for the PPV card’s potential change of venue, the lightweight champion ended up getting turned away at the border and flying on to Russia. There he promptly found himself caught up in the nation’s increasing travel bans, as Russia – along with much of the rest of the world – attempts to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
UFC legend Anderson Silva has revealed in a recent interview with UFC Brasil that he was planning to retire before his middleweight title defense against Chris Weidman at UFC 162, which saw Silva lose the middleweight title after being KO’d by Weidman in the second round.
We are just over one month away from UFC 250, and with Brazil far and away the hardest hit South American country in terms of overall coronavirus cases, it’s more than reasonable to think that this card won’t happen as originally planned. With that in mind, the card’s co-headliners have an idea to salvage their title fight.
Israel Adesanya has dropped the nice guy act and called out Jon Jones after initially expressing sympathy for ‘Bones’ following the UFC light heavyweight champion’s latest arrest for drunk driving.
“Like, I felt bad for him when I watched the body cam footage as well. At the end, when he was just sobbing, I felt bad for him. Because I can imagine myself in that position,” Adesanya said after watching video footage of Jones’ arrest.
Dana White is convinced that the show will go on.
UFC 249: Khabib vs. Ferguson was originally scheduled to take place in New York at the Barclays Center. It got relocated because, as everyone knows (well, presumably), there’s a pandemic going on. This all prompted White to get angry and emotional.
UFC 249 was a go for a few days. They had a venue, a card, and it was set to go forward on pay-per-view. Eventually the greater good was served and the event was shut down due COVID-19 concerns. But one of the bouts the UFC did try to add to the card originally was apparently a UFC welterweight title fight between champion Kamaru Usman and challenger Jorge Masvidal.
Daniel Cormier’s long awaited trilogy bout with Stipe Miocic is close to being finalized, per a recent Instagram Live session with UFC welterweight champ Kamaru Usman.
Cormier lost the heavyweight title to Miocic at UFC 241 after succumbing to a barrage of body shots in the fourth round.
