For all the drama that has swirled around the UFC’s attempts to put on UFC 249 during the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s one undeniable truth: The headliners of Saturday night’s event in Jacksonville, Fla., are thrilled to be a part of what will, one way or another, go down as a long-remembered evening on the United States’ sporting landscape.
The interim lightweight title matchup between Tony Ferguson and Justin Gaethje tops an event that will be the first major live sporting event in North America since the sweeping coronavirus forced elite sports to halt competition nearly two months ago.
During a Tuesday media conference call, both main eventers made clear they’re excited to be the focus of the entire sports world.
“Seriously, I’m going to be real – this is awesome,” Ferguson said. “You can hear this in both of our voices, dude. There’s no (expletive) with this. When they have the wars going on and everything else, they only had the Olympics going on. Right now, there’s no Olympics, there’s no Wimbledon, there’s no NBA Draft, there’s no NFL Draft, there’s no (expletive) tennis, there’s no soccer, hockey, there’s no baseball. This is what we bring to the table, man, and we’re going to do our best and we’re going to keep sports alive and that’s what we’re going to do.”
For his part, Gaethje (21-2 MMA, 4-2 UFC) is most excited about the idea that he’ll help provide fight fans with a break from the onslaught of bad news that has come to be a part of people’s day-to-day existence.
“I’m (expletive) proud to be a part of it,” Gaethje said. “There’s a good opportunity to inspire. People need to be inspired right now. They need to not let themselves become depressed (and) emotional because they can’t control what’s going on right now. They need to be inspired in a way, and we have the opportunity.”
It’s been a long road to UFC 249. Originally, (Ferguson 25-3 MMA, 15-1 UFC) was scheduled to meet lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov in New York on April 18, but the Brooklyn event fell through when the state was hit hard by COVID-19. Nurmagomedov pulled out of the bout due to travel issues, which led to Gaethje’s call-up.
The company made an ill-advised attempt to run outside commission regulation on Native American land in California on April 18 before that date was yanked. Now, the UFC resumes its schedule on what was originally slated to be the date for UFC 250, with the state of Florida greenlighting the event under commission regulation with precautions in place, including coronavirus testing and a strict limit to the number of people permitted at the venue.
COVID-19’s spread has had a ripple effect all over the sport, as gyms have closed in response to the virus. But UFC 249 competitors said that, by and large, their training camps didn’t change a bunch, since an elite fighter’s hard training days aren’t all that different than quarantine life, anyway.
“If anything, I really don’t know the difference between quarantine and the COVID-19 quarantine and me and my training camp,” said bantamweight champion Henry Cejudo (15-2 MMA, 9-2 UFC), who meets former champ Dominick Cruz in the evening’s co-feature bout. “I’m a professional. I train each and every day. I do my recovery, and I try to do everything right.”
Cruz (22-2 MMA, 5-1 UFC), for his part, was already helping Alliance MMA teammate Jeremy Stephens prepare for a fight with Calvin Kattar when he received his latest shot at the gold.
“I was already training hard, and Jeremy Stephens already had a fight coming up with Calvin Kattar, so I was helping him train for that about two weeks before this card got slated,” Cruz said. “So I was already training pretty hard with Jeremy, sparring him, just helping him and making sure he had the same workouts he was doing so he wasn’t having to train alone. And that led right into this camp.”
Seeing four of the world’s truly elite fighters compete for titles in an empty venue is going to make for an unusual experience for those watching at home. The fighters themselves, though, have already been through similar experiences, even though they weren’t under these exact circumstances.
“I think the silence might be the weird part realistically, but if you fight in Japan, there’s a lot of people there, but they don’t make a lot of noise, so it could be like that,” Cruz said. “Also, when you train in the gym a lot, I don’t have a lot of people in the gym, especially now in the quarantine, when you’re training. We’ve all been having to train with minimal people, 4-6 people max, in the gym so there’s nobody getting contaminated, and it’s been pretty silent in there. So I think it is going to resemble training in the gym.”
Ferguson, whose entry to the UFC came through the winning “The Ultimate Fighter 13,” envisions a similar vibe to fighting in the old TUF Gym.
“When I was on ‘The Ultimate Fighter,’ it was the exact same thing,” he said. “The only people that we had in the crowd were two sets of bleachers and our coaches. We had a couple of cornermen and we had the commission right there. It’s going to be exactly like how it was when I was on ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ when I fought on Team Lesnar. Nothing is going to change.”
While championship-level fighters have an other-worldly ability to push aside distractions – even ones as serious as the coronavirus – at the end of the day, UFC 249’s stars still understand Saturday isn’t just another ordinary fight night.
“I look at this as a time I can make a huge difference,” Cruz said. “What’s the value of champion’s belts or an Olympic gold medal when there’s 33 million Americans that just filed for unemployment benefits, they can’t feed their family since mid-March? (Thousands of) Americans died in the United States, there’s no vaccine coming, probably no end in sight. … Realistically it’s to make a difference and stand for everyone who thinks they’re not a champion and let them know that regardless what everybody says, regardless what everyone’s credentials are, none of that really matters if you believe and if you want it and have a greater purpose than yourself.”
UFC 249 takes place Saturday at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Fla. The main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims on ESPN and ESPN+.
UFC 249 headliners excited for chance 'to keep sports alive' during COVID-19
