Arguably what makes these Big Apple events so special is the many years in the wilderness that there were no events in New York at all. It still boggles the mind that less than six years ago, MMA was still not legal in the state, and that epic UFC 205 card I mentioned above was the first…and that was in 2016.
If you’re a newer UFC fan and don’t know this part of the story, I strongly encourage you to watch the short, excellent documentary Judgement Day (just above these paragraphs) that details the chaos of moving what was expected to be UFC’s New York debut (UFC 12 in 1997, scheduled for Buffalo) to the small down of Dothan, Alabama in just a few short days when New York State suddenly outlawed the sport.
Mercifully, cooler heads eventually prevailed many years later, and now the „The Mecca“ of Madison Square Garden can add names like Conor McGregor, Daniel Cormier and Rose Namajunas to it’s annals of historic fights, alongside names like Muhammad Ali and Rocky Marciano.
UFC 268 COUNTDOWN: Usman vs Covington 2 | Namajunas vs Zhang 2 | Gaethje vs Chandler | Full Episode
So here we are on the ground in NYC again, on the lookout for more of those storied moments as yet another epic Empire State card comes together for Saturday. And as this is the UFC’s first return to the city since the global pandemic turned the world upside down, the energy is feeling even more momentous than usual.
