The Announcement: UFC’s Fight Island
By Eddie Sanchez
On a Tuesday that was supposed to be dominated by Boxing headlines, with their own return to action in the form of 22 year old Shakur Stevenson’s 6th round KO, the UFC dominated the day before said bout had a chance.
Rumors of the location for UFC’s highly anticipated Fight Island ran rampant early in the morning and Dana White made swift work to make an official announcement on Facebook and confirming the specific plans on ESPN’s First Take.
Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island, are you ready?
The UFC’s upcoming venture in the United Arab Emirates will hit the ground running in July, with UFC 251 scheduled for July 11th and three UFC Fight Night’s scheduled for the 15th, 18th and 25th.
UFC 251 will be an electric introduction to Fight Island with three title fights littering the stacked card.
The inclusion of Usman-Burns has been met with a mixed reaction on Twitter. The hard-core fans are intrigued to see what will come of this bout. Burns recently dominated Tyron Woodley for five straight rounds. Woodley was coming off a crushing defeat to Usman where he lost his title.
The casual fans that make up a large amount of the buying public, for the most successful PPV cards, seem to not be as enthused with this matchup. Much of the disappointment stems from the ongoing feud some fighters have with Dana White, most notably in this case, Jorge Masvidal who seemed destined for the title shot. While Masvidal fans may be disappointed, the Usman-Burns matchup will be an intriguing matchup likely destined to be a stand-up brawl given their strengths in wrestling will likely keep them off of the mat.
Likely anticipating a mixed reaction to the scheduled welterweight championship, observers will be treated to the Volkanovski-Holloway rematch.
In the first match, Volkanovski overwhelmed Holloway with low kicks and managed to out land the career leader in significant strikes landed, in every round to win the Featherweight championship. It will be interesting to see what adjustments will have been made on Max’s end this time around.
The third title fight will be for the vacant bantamweight championship between Petr Yan and Jose Aldo. While this will be a welcome addition to the card, it’s inclusion will surely highlight Henry Cejudo’s recent retirement which is quite interesting in itself.
Triple C recently mentioned that there is one fight that would wake him up in the morning and it happens to be with the previously mentioned Volkanovski. Having the two title fights on the same card may likely be a coincidence of the UFC’s current circumstances, but there now remains an opportunity for an immediate focus put on Cejudo following the completion of Fight Island’s first PPV card, but that will likely be a discussion for another day.
Much hard work has been put into this endeavor by Dana White and the rest of his team. It’s almost perfect that as boxing finally made its return to ESPN, that the UFC has laid out a tremendous July schedule.
Yas Island, we are ready!
Are you excited for UFC 251? Let us know your thoughts on Fight Island.
