With the fights going on as scheduled, the fighters then had to adjust to an empty arena for the first time. The Nilson Nelson Gymnasium in Brasilia can hold more than 11,000, but the only people in the Arena during each fight were the two people competing, the referee, the commentary team and the judges at cageside. Naturally, that atmosphere – or lack thereof -impacted the athletes in a variety of ways.
“The first fight without crowd was really shocking a little bit because you walk into the arena and you see nobody,” Walker, who fought and lost a decision to Nikita Krylov, said. “It just looked like a dream, like, ‘What’s going on?’ Everybody felt a little bit depressed the first time because we always fight for the crowd.”
How To Watch UFC 283: Teixeira vs Hill In Your Country
Burns, who expected a large amount of friends and family in the crowd for the biggest fight of his career to that point, had to help them find somewhere else to watch. Once he got to the arena, though, he struggled to lock in and focus at the monumental task at hand.
“I remember the crazy thing going to the fight was when they said, ‘OK, now we’re going to the fight, going to start walking,’” he said. “I had a long walk before I got to the place to start my walkout song, and there was like a silence, but so much so that I start hearing my heartbeat, and I said, ‘Man, why is it so quiet?’ It was too much. I was like, ‘Man, it doesn’t feel like I’m fighting,’ and they said, ‘OK, now we are walking,’ and my music was going on, and I was walking. The arena was empty. It was not like the UFC APEX because the APEX is super small. The arena was huge. It was kind of echoing. It was different.
“When I got to the Octagon, I said, ‘Oh s**t, I’m fighting.’ And then Demian Maia started walking out, and then I was like, ‘Wow. We are fighting.’ It was so weird. It took me like 10 seconds to, like, start the fight, shake hands, start moving, and then I said, ‘OK, we’re fighting.’ And then to really be in my zone that I had to be. That was different.”
