Las Vegas-based Ultimate Fighting Championship is taking the show on the road during these pandemic times.
UFC 261 will be held in Jacksonville, Florida — where UFC President Dana White staged the first major sports event a year ago during the COVID-19 era — in front of a capacity crowd of 15,000 on April 24.
Dana White is heading to Florida for UFC 261 . Photo credit: J. Tyge O’Donnell/LVSportsBiz.com
Welterweight champion Kamaru Usman will defend his title in a rematch against Jorge Masvidal. The two will headline a three-title fight event, White said on Twitter Monday.
UFC 261 on April 24 will be in Jacksonville, Fla., with a full house of fans – full capacity at the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena. And you know I’m bringing an incredible card. … This is a stacked card in front of 15,000 UFC fans. — UFC boss Dana White
White used social media to announce the news. He has held UFC fight shows at the promotion’s Las Vegas-based Apex facility or in the Middle East.
“I have been waiting a year for this day to tell you we are back,” White said.
The last time Usman and Masvidal met was in Abu Dhabi in UFC 251, where the fight show reportedly generated 900,000 PPV buys in the United States and totaled 1.3 million internationally.
The card will also feature two previously announced championship bouts between Valentina Shevchenko vs Jessica Andrade, while Weilli Zhang taking on Rose Namajunas. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the promotion has held over 50 events at its Apex headquarters in Las Vegas. The location is just over a year old and according to White, “The Apex is one of the smartest things we’ve done in 20-years. Timing is everything in life; this place was done just in time for a global pandemic.”
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – MAY 30: Workers sanitize the Octagon between fights during the UFC Fight Night event at UFC APEX on May 30, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC)
UFC’s pre-pandemic capacity crowd was in Las Vegas on March 7, 2020 just weeks before the state, country, and world shut their doors. The promotion subsequently regrouped and was close to booking a show on tribal land in California before being told to “stand down” by ESPN, its broadcasting partner.
In the weeks that followed, UFC held a full fight card in an empty arena in Brazil mid-March of 2020. It then canceled events and suspended action until May, when the promotion produced three events at VyStar in Jacksonville before returning to the UFC Apex in Las Vegas.
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Snel covered the business side of sports for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal. As a city hall beat reporter, Snel also covered stadium deals in Denver and Seattle.
In 2000, Snel launched a sport-business website for FoxSports.com called FoxSportsBiz.com.
After reporting sports-business for the RJ, Snel wrote hard-hitting stories on the Raiders stadium for the Desert Companion magazine in Las Vegas and The Nevada Independent.
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