Up to UFC / MMA Articles

in UFC / MMA Articles

The UFC is coming to Western Canada - According to the UFC

Bookmark and Share by BetUS Editor

The UFC is coming to Western Canada. It has been reported that they plan on holding a show in Vancouver next year, with GM Place reserved for a card in June.

Dana White is confident that despite current MMA restrictions the UFC will be holding a major fight within the year. UFC officials have been in Vancouver over the past few weeks to press their cause and have held meetings with B.C. Attourney General Mike de Jong this week and also met with Vancouver city Mayor, Gregor Robertson a few months ago. “We’ve had positive meetings,” Marc Ratner, the UFC’s vice-president of regulatory affairs, said in an interview Thursday.

Join BetUS Sportsbook Today!

The UFC president is pretty much calling it a done deal and plans to hold fights in Vancouver and Toronto in 2010. “We’re going to Vancouver. We’ll be there soon ... Let’s just say we got it done,” he told the UFC 102 pre-fight news conference Thursday.

The UFC has always been high on Canada, often calling it the Mecca of MMA with a massive following and strong ticket sales and rabid crowd at the two events held in Montreal. June has been cited as the target date for the event but there is obviously no card details to speak of. One could bet that Georges St. Pierre would most likely want to be on that fight as he is a very patriotic Canadian and the Vancouver crowd would be behind the French-Canadian 100%. It would actually be quite unifyinig for Canada as the French have notoriously had poor relations with the rest of the country.

Before the UFC can call it a done deal they will still have to go before city council to get approval but they are clearly confident that they will be able to present a strong enough case for the event to get the green light “we should be able to get approved.” Shows had been permitted in Vancouver until the council opted to call a halt while it studied the issue.

Helping their case is the fact that MMA events are happening all over the province and the demand for the sport is through the roof.