LAS VEGAS – After the official announcement that UFC 243 is set to take place in Australia, UFC president Dana White believes it’ll be the biggest fight to ever take place Down Under.
UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker (20-4 MMA, 11-2 UFC) takes on interim middleweight champion Israel Adesanya (17-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) in the event’s headliner, at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne. The pay-per-view event takes place locally on Sunday, Oct. 6, but airs in North America on Oct. 5 due to the time change.
Speaking on Wednesday to MMA Junkie and other reporters, White said he thinks the fight will be the biggest in Australian history, garnering the interest of fans worldwide, and he believes the event will bring a UFC record for a live audience.
“I think we sell it out at 60,000,” White said. “It’s going to be the biggest fight in Australian history, period. Any fight they’ve ever done there, this is going to be the biggest fight ever. This fight is global.
“When they did big fights in Australia, whether it was a boxing match or whatever, even if all of Australia was engaged, the rest of the world wasn’t. You have the Middle East, you got Europe, you have Canada, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, all these countries are going to be interested in this fight. I don’t think there’s ever been a fight since Kostya Tszyu or something, where there was a fight where the rest of the world was interested.”
While the UFC expects to announce a robust lineup of fan-friendly bouts to fill the card, White believes the interest in the headliner, alone, guarantees it will be a special event.
“If I was Vince McMahon writing scripts, you couldn’t write a better script than this,” White said. You have the champion who’s from Australia, and then you have the interim champion – it just couldn’t be better.”
For more on UFC 243, check out the UFC schedule.
