After a successful opening to season 8 of Dana White’s Contender Series, the UFC President was asked about the speculation surrounding the sport’s most controversial arena.
As UFC Vegas 100 looms ominously over the horizon, rumors that The Apex in Las Vegas could be shutting down, albeit temporarily, continue to circulate online – with the promotion also plotting some major international events towards the end of 2024/start of 2025.
Dana White addresses rumors of the UFC Apex closing down
Over the past several weeks, rumors of the controversial arena being temporarily shut down for renovations have been strife online; especially among fans who are becoming increasingly frustrated with the lackluster Fight Night events being held there of late.
Whilst Dana White did confirm that the Apex will be getting some major upgrades as the UFC invests between $20-25 million in additional renovations, he was unsure what it would mean for the promotion’s schedule.
“We’re doing a $20 million expansion here so we’re going to invest a lot of money in this place,” White told reporters after a solid first episode of season 8 of the Contender Series.
“We’ve got some pretty big announcements coming up in the next six months so it’ll all sort of make sense as to what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
“I don’t think it’s true that it’s closing,” he later added, reaffirming that any closure would result in the promotion traveling to more locations, both domestic and internationally, for events.
“I don’t know how that’s going to work out, yeah I don’t know enough about that but we’re open to traveling around to many different places now, more open than I was a couple of years ago.”
So, where is the UFC targeting for its next slate of big international shows?
Three major international locations are on the UFC radar for 2024/2025
Just a few hours earlier, White appeared on the latest episode of The Pat McAfee Show to discuss both the success of the business and what’s next for the promotion moving forward.
Specifically, White was asked about his thoughts on UFC 304 in Manchester being held in the middle of the night and whether he has plans to bring similarly stacked PPVs to other international markets.
“Yeah, we’ve been doing that [middle of the night thing] for years; the problem is that when you go global, you are in other time zones – we always try to stay on American time zone but sometimes we’re not.
“We’ve got early fights, we’ve got late fights, we’ve got fights in the middle of the afternoon, it gets all mixed depending on where we’re going.”
So, where are the UFC going?
Well, White first read off a list of confirmed locations including Perth, Australia for UFC 305, a Fight Night card in Paris, France for September, and UFC 308 in Abu Dhabi in October – before seemingly confirming two new locations: Edmonton (Canada), and Macau (China).
“We’re cruising around here soon, we’re going to Perth this week, we’ve got Paris [in] France coming up, Abu Dhabi in October, Edmonton [in] Canada, and Macau [in] China – so we’re traveling around at the end of this year.”
Edmonton has hosted two UFC events in 2017 and 2019, with Macau having hosted Fight Night cards in 2012 and 2014 respectively – the promotion has not returned to China since 2019.
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Yet White also teased that there could be another major new location added to that list, should middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis defeat former king Israel Adesanya this weekend at UFC 305.
“[It’s a] big fight, every time guys hate each other like this then the fight usually ends up sucking, but I have a really good feeling that this one won’t… You have one of these situations where everything is on the line because they hate each other so much.
“If he [Dricus] can beat Izzy and bring that belt back to South Africa, obviously we’ll do an event there.”
UFC 305 goes down live from the RAC Arena in Perth on Saturday, August 17.
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