This Is How The MMA World Reacted To The Cancellation Of UFC 249
In the last couple of hours, Dana White has announced that UFC 249 and all upcoming events have been postponed. Despite jumping through hoops and thinking outside the box on a daily basis in recent weeks, the UFC boss had to admit defeat for its much talked about UFC 249 card.
The decision came after the ‘powers that be’ at ESPN and Disney told Dana to pull the plug on the shows, finally succumbing to the coronavirus pandemic that has brought the whole sporting world to a screeching halt.
The New York Times has reported that California Governor Gavin Newsom called Disney to express his concerns with the event going ahead.
A few weeks ago there were huge doubts that UFC 249 would go ahead as planned on April 18th. But then when Khabib Nurmagomedov ruled himself out, saying he was stuck in Russia, and Dana remained adamant that the card will go ahead as planned, you could easily have thought at that point that the UFC was definitely going to pull it off. Somehow. Somewhere.
After Khabib had ruled himself out, it was announced that Justin Gaethje would fight Tony Ferguson for the UFC interim lightweight title. In the UFC 249 co-main event, Rose Namajunas was scheduled to face Jessica Andrade in an exciting strawweight rematch between the two former champions. However, ‘Thug’ Rose withdrew from card yesterday for undisclosed reasons. Her manager Brian Butler-Au, has since announced that it was because she lost two family members to the coronavirus.
UFC 249 was set to go down at the Tachi Palace Hotel and Casino in Lemoore, California. As were the following three events. Dana announced a few days ago that he was securing a private island to continue with international fight cards. The UFC president is hoping that his ‘Fight Island’ will be ready to go in around one month’s time.
In light of the postponement of UFC 249, we’re hoping that the UFC will make Khabib Nurmagomedov vs Tony Ferguson and Conor McGregor vs Justin Gaethje. They’re the fights to make.
Tony was having a phone interview when the big announcement was made. You can see his reaction to the news here:
And this is how the rest of the MMA world reacted to the postponement of UFC 249:
We will add more reactions in the upcoming days, as more fighters react to the news that we’re not going to see any UFC events for at least a month.
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