According to a tweet by ESPN’s Brett Okomoto, the UFC has officially decided to go through with the event, this time in an empty arena.
“Saturday’s UFC Fight Night in Brasilia, Brazil has been moved up two hours, to a start time of 3pm ET. It will air on ESPN+, as well as ESPN now. Empty arena. UFC still quiet on future cards. Crazy times,” said Okomoto in a tweet, earlier today.
Although this may come as a shock to many, this could spell a big change in what’s to come for the future of the UFC and how they plan on holding public events moving forward.
As the UFC will now be missing out entirely on live gate ticket sales for Saturday’s card, it is hard to tell whether or not this could pave a new path in the way that the UFC holds events in the near future, or if this could spell a huge disaster, financially for the promotion.
Only time will tell as to what will happen with future UFC events moving forward.
One event that comes to mind is the highly anticipated lightweight title fight between champion, Khabib Nurmagomedov, and top contender, Tony Ferguson, which is scheduled to take place next month, on April 18 at UFC 249.
Earlier today, the state of New York also made statements regarding not holding public events that require more than 500 people to be in attendance.
Stay tuned on what’s to come for the UFC, and future events following this Saturday’s UFC Brasilia fight card.
