Now it’s official that 249 has been moved and that we won’t be seeing some crazy fight island fantasized in Dana White’s dreams, but the proposition of moving events away from strict regulatory bodies does bring up some interesting questions – as things move forward, it’s extremely unlikely we’ll ever see a suggestion so far out there, but it’s always fun to speculate and wonder what could have been where an event was long removed from regulation and commissions, and rules and judging schemes that actually fit the sports can be put into place.
When events are held inside the US, the challenges for both fighters and fans have been made all too apparent – commissions in different states with different rules with all need to be considered, judges that are supplied by the state who have proven to be more than useless from time to time and last minute changes because a certain light heavyweight may not be allowed to compete and so the event needs to be moved to the otherside of the country. These are similar struggles that happen when the events move overseas too, and especially in newer locations, as uncertainty around the same factors are pulled into play. But what if the events could be moved away from these issues, and if competent people and rules were to be put in place?
This is what we could’ve seen on fight island – a way around the bureaucracy and an opportunity to allow competence to shine – no more judges that don’t know what they’re doing, no more regulations that chop and change rules at a whim. Now it doesn’t come without issues, however, as fan attendance is of course a big part of the sport and without infrastructure for hosting guests and the likely difficulty for fans to actually reach the location are big indicators to why this will remain forever unlikely. Getting around certain rules in place isn’t anything new, we’ve seen fighters in the octagon bend the rules a little, fans using a host of sites not covered by gamstop here to get around any measures to prevent betting, and the UFC changing things up to ensure an event can take place.
UFC249 is now reconfirmed for May 9th, and with what’s going on it’s pretty much a certainty at this point that the event will take place within the US as efforts are being made in the country to get sporting events back underway as soon as possible – but at least for a short time we had hope that we may have been able to see a string of events without questionable decisions and judging. The possibility can never be a discounted one with Dana however, and even after the initial cancellation and the rebooking for May, he has remained adamant that this may one day be a thing – if it is, then it could usher in a new era for combat sports as a whole.
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