Report: UFC 249 could take place in Florida
UFC 249 had previously been scheduled to take place on April 18 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York but the NYSAC shut down those plans due to the restrictions on large-crowd gatherings and it left the UFC scrambling to find a new home for the PPV event.
On Monday night, UFC President Dana White appeared on an Instagram chat with Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports and said that he was 99.9% set on a location, but wasn’t ready to reveal the location to anyone just yet. On Tuesday, in a longer interview with Iole, White said he doesn’t feel the need to rush the news about where UFC 249 will take place.
“I have two or three options in the United States and I have three or four options outside the country. I’m not going to tell you. Listen, everybody’s on a need-to-know basis and nobody needs to know right now. There’s still a few details that need to be worked out, but I have a lot of options right now.”
As White told Iole, he has a few options in the United States and according to a report from Steven Marrocco of MMA Fighting, those options could all be in the state of Florida. Although there is likely several options on the table for UFC 249, Marrocco mentions three cities in Florida that the UFC could be looking at.
Industry source just told me UFC in active talks to hold UFC 249 in Florida using same setup as Combat Night event. Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville mentioned as potential hosts.
— Steven Marrocco (@Steven_Marrocco) March 24, 2020
I’m sure the promotion is having multiple convos with multiple hosts, but add this one to list of possibilities.
— Steven Marrocco (@Steven_Marrocco) March 24, 2020
While there is no concrete plans for the UFC to head to Florida officially, this is the first location that has actually been reported either in the United States or outside of it. Combat Night 18 recently took place in Jacksonville, Florida this past weekend and was a closed event with no audience allowed in the building. ESPN dug behind-the-scenes to see how it all went down and there could be ideas as to what the UFC might be able to do in order to stage UFC 249 in Florida.
All along, Dana White has been confident about his ability to make sure UFC 249 happens as planned, and it appears there are some possible location suitors to make it all work.
