WHILE we are all trying to make some sense of this new normal, UFC President Dana White was having no more of the drudgery and decided he wanted to go ahead with UFC 249.
Dana’s ambitious plan was to hold the event at a venue he called “Fight Island” which was located on a tribal land owned by the Tachi-Yokut Tribe and therefore outside of the California State law jurisdiction.
Not so fast, says the top Disney and ESPN executives.
Citing the risks attendant to having an event in the midst of a pandemic, White was ordered to “stand down.”
FIGHTS. White justified his endeavor by saying he had to take care of his fighters and that he was determined to prove that Mixed Martial Arts would be the first sport back.
There’s no denying White’s business capacities and talents. After all, you cannot turn a $2 million dollar acquisition and parlay it into a $4 billion dollar sale in 16 years if you are a doofus.
But I really think this was too ambitious at this time and it was quite wise to pull the plug.
We all know the sports world is at a standstill but in the hierarchy of essential things, we have to admit that holding sports events is at the bottom of the rung.
While indeed, one-on-one sports like boxing and MMA could pose lesser risks than team sports just by the sheer number of participants, still the attendant risks are too myriad and potentially too damaging.
RISKS. Dana’s plan was to fly in the fighters and have them tested and hold the event with no fans in attendance but with select media.
But the testing concerns alone already create doubt. Just the other day, there were articles in science journals about some testing protocols demonstrating that testing by different methods will produce different results.
Furthermore, reports are pouring in about reinfection in South Korea and China and some scientists have referred to it as re-activation, indicating that the virus could possibly lay dormant in the body undetectable by existing tests.
That alone is as scary as hell and would be enough to scuttle a sports event as ambitious as Dana’s plans.
What is clear to all is that the science is still out on Covid-19 and almost every week we are discovering something new about this virus and it would be foolhardy to go against existing quarantine protocols, until we know better.
Then of course, there is also the issue of money.
PROFITS. Dana has expressed his sentiment about not laying off any of his workers or staff and paying the fighters scheduled to fight on their contracts this year.
But if the UFC can acquire a private island, spend on travel expenses and spare no expenditures when it comes to logistics wouldn’t that be better off spent on these fighters and employees for as long as it takes, rather than embarking on another event just to prove that the UFC is a trailblazer at all cost?
Then of course, you’re not naïve enough to expect the UFC to hold an event and lose money, are you?
LAST ROUND. It’s on a dear friend, Goldie Romarate Delvo, who recently celebrated her birthday, Cheers!