Return To Fight Island: ‘Abu Dhabi Will Be Fight Capital Of The World’

Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC

While details are still scarce, UFC president Dana White just confirmed that Abu Dhabi will host most big fights involving international athletes.

With the United States continuing to see troubling numbers of Coronavirus cases and deaths, it should be no surprise that the UFC is keeping their backup location for international fights ready to go.

There’s been a pretty high amount of positive COVID-19 tests and fight fallouts for this month’s batch of events held in Las Vegas, proving the US is a less than ideal spot to be bringing fighters from less ravaged countries to compete. We just kind of assumed Fight Island aka Yas Island in Abu Dhabi would make it back on the schedule sooner rather than later.

And now Dana White has confirmed with ESPN that many major fights involving foreign athletes will end up in the United Arab Emirates.

“A lof of the big fights that are international are going to be on Fight Island,” White announced in a statement to Sports Center. “I told everybody the last time we were there, people sort of thought this was a one-and-done or whatever. It’s not. We’re going to be at Fight Island. Abu Dhabi is going to end up being the fight capital of the world. It definitely isn’t Las Vegas.”

UFC 252 on August 15th is set for the UFC APEX in Las Vegas, but this announcement all but confirms that UFC 253 on September 19th featuring Israel Adesanya vs. Paulo Costa for the middleweight strap will be in Abu Dhabi. Also likely to take place on Fight Island: UFC 254 on October 24th featuring Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Justin Gaethje. Khabib just revealed that three of his fellow Dagestani teammates will also be competing on the card, so that just cements the card even more as one of White’s ‘big international fights.’

As for UFC 255, currently set for November 21st and headlined by a flyweight title bout between Deiveson Figueiredo and former bantamweight champ Cody Garbrandt? Location-wise it makes sense to have that one in Vegas, but we imagine it’ll really depend on how the United States is doing. If things take a turn for the worse there’s a very good chance the Nevada Athletic Commission will go ahead and shut the entire state down for combat sports.