UFC 249 Location Revealed!

Adam Hagy-USA TODAY Sports

After weeks of speculation and guesses as to where UFC 249 would take place, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has settled on a location for the revamped pay-per-view (PPV) event just under two weeks from fight night.

Jeff Sherwood first reported that the event will go down inside Tachi Palace Casino Resort in Lemoore, Calif., on April 18, 2020, which was later confirmed by The New York Times.

If the venue sounds familiar to you, that’s because it played host to multiple World Extreme Cagefighting (WEC) events during the now-defunct promotion’s early days. And of course, it was the longtime home of the Tachi Palace Fights (TPF) promotion, which saw its run come to an end in 2018.

It was recently announced that the new main event would feature an interim lightweight title fight between Tony Ferguson and Justin Gaethje. UFC 249 was originally set to be headlined by Khabib Nurmagomedov defending his 155-pound strap against “El Cucuy,” but the promotion had to look elsewhere after “The Eagle” was grounded in Russia.

Of course, no fans will be allowed to attend, as it will be a closed door event limited to a select few UFC staff members, commissioners and of course, fight team members.

Dana White — who has been grinding to lock down a venue for the past couple of weeks in the face of a worldwide pandemic — recently revealed he is in the process of securing a private island to stage international fights. In the meantime, he stated that his current venue will be the official home for all UFC events for the next two months.

In a cruel twist of fate, the resort is only three hours away from San Jose Calif., home of American Kickboxing Academy (AKA) were Nurmagomedov trains.