UFC President Dana White thinks UFC 249 will happen amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Khabib Nurmagomedov is slated to fight Tony Ferguson April 18, but coronavirus has thrown a major wrench in the plans of everything. With the UFC currently halted because of the virus, White still thinks he can get UFC 249 done. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
Breaking: The UFC’s next three events — scheduled for March 21, March 28, and April 11 — have been postponed, Dana White communicated to his staff on Monday, via email. (via @bokamotoESPN | @espnmma)
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— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) March 16, 2020
The UFC president told Mike Tyson the following during a recent interview about his plans for UFC 249:
I’m gonna try and pull off Tony vs. Khabib on April 18 and, you know, try to get some normalcy back in this country…Every day that I work on this thing, I get another curve ball thrown at me. Every time we plan something, it falls apart. I have to re-do it, re-do it. I have four or five locations right now and we’re getting this deal done. And then we’re going to figure out who we can get in, who we can’t, what we can do and we’re going to build a card around it.
You can watch and listen to his full comments below.
First off, Mike Tyson interviewing Dana White is incredible. I know that we all have to find stuff to smile about during these tough times, and this is an all-time optic.
Having said that, we’ll have to see if White can actually get this done or not. While I appreciate his optimism, I’m certainly not holding my breath.
I would be incredibly happy to watch Khabib and Ferguson fight. It would captivate the world to finally have sports back, but April 18 is only a few weeks away.
I just don’t see it happening. I don’t see it happening at all. Short of just putting Khabib and Ferguson in an empty arena to fight with no crowd, I’m not sure how this fight happens in a few short weeks.
Again, I appreciate White’s optimism and wanting to get something done. I really do, and I hope he comes through in the clutch.
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Given what we’ve been through these past three weeks, I just don’t see any major sports events happening soon. Let us know in the comments what you think will happen.