Unified MMA president Sunny Sareen discusses the impact COVID-19 has had on the industry

As the coronavirus pandemic grips the entire world, it’s not just American MMA promotions which have felt the impact. Canadian-based Unified MMA was slated to hold an event on March 14 in Edmonton, Alberta, when less than 48 hours prior to the event it was canceled.

In less than a day, Unified’s president, Sunny Sareen, saw his promotion’s show go from a sold-out affair featuring multiple title fights to being completely shuttered at the urging of the provincial government.

“The announcement kind of came online from the Alberta government, so as I was watching it half the roster called me and was asking if was true,” Sareen told MMAWeekly.com. “I looked into it and found out that yes it was going that way, so I had to call fighters, managers, and (inform them of the cancellation).

“A lot of them understood the situation, a lot of them were frustrated, but at the end it is for the health and safety of everyone because (the coronavirus) was spreading pretty quickly.”

While canceling Unified 40 due to health reasons was largely understood, for the people involved with the event it represented a big financial hit, especially after they had put in so much work preparing for the show.

“It’s the roughest for the fighters and the guys working for the promotion,” said Sareen. “The matchmakers, the social media guys that we had, they’d been working for three months for the event.

“The fighters trained and were expecting a payday that day, and if you don’t fight you don’t get paid. They need to fight to make money. That’s kind of the way it’s working with everybody’s business right now.”

Sareen feels like how quickly a show can come together following the lifting of lockdown and gathering bans will be dictated in part by the availability of fighters and their readiness to fight on shorter notice.

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“We’re going to have to base it on when athletes are ready to go,” Sareen said. “I could probably get a show together pretty quickly, but gyms are closed right now, guys aren’t training, so I don’t want them to come into a place when they’re not prepared physically.

“When the ban is gone, I’m thinking it could take another four to six weeks before you can even put a show together. Hopefully we can get something together in the summer; otherwise it is in the fall.”

As for when things could return, Sareen notes that it’s out of promoter’s hands and sits more with governing bodies, and even then, how the MMA business is conducted could be altered at least for the immediate aftermath of the pandemic lockdown.

“You need the government, whether it’s commissions or the city, you need them to regulate the event to oversee everything, so our path kind of lays with them,” said Sareen. “I’m hoping this is a once and done thing, but if it keeps going, then we’re going to start booking event on shorter periods.

“Right now we’re booking events 12 weeks out, but if these waves come in where they’re canceling events it might come down to where we’re announcing events in four weeks and kind of go through that.”