White, in an interview on ESPN SportsCenter, says they had a location set for this weekend's Fight Night card, but new coronavirus restrictions imposed by President Donald Trump halted those plans.
“Listen, we were ready to go on Saturday. We’re ready to go live on ESPN on Saturday Night from Firelake Arena, an Indian Reservation in Oklahoma City. We have the card, we have the fighters, we have everything. The President just spoke to the country and basically said now...it started at 50 people in a room, which made it difficult and we complied. We took all the fans out and made sure that there were as few production people in the room as possible, we pulled it off last Saturday. Now their saying that there should be no more than ten in a room and that’s impossible, we can’t do it and we’ve complied with everything the government and these doctors said to do and we have no choice now to postpone these fights,” says White.
The now canceled UFC card for this weekend was originally set for London, but travel restrictions brought on by the coronavirus is what initially led to the chaos surrounding that event.
UFC 249 would be the next event of the UFC calendar and that is headlined by Khabib Nurmagomedov defending the lightweight title against Tony Ferguson, which an event White guarantees will happen as planned.
“We’re postponing these next three events, but Tony Ferguson versus Khabib...April 18 is still on and will still happen. We’re gonna follow these guidelines and not have more than ten people in a room and we're all hoping this all clears up by April, this fights gonna happen...no crowd, whatever it takes. Probably not even gonna be in the United States, but this fights gonna happen,” says White.
While White says UFC 249 probably won’t happen in the United States, no potential locations have been named by the UFC President at this time.
