Renowned MMA coach Din Thomas is showing his support for UFC president Dana White.
Depending on who you ask, White’s efforts to run as many UFC events as possible amid the coronavirus are either applaudable or greedy. On one hand, fighters will get the opportunity to be paid and fight fans can briefly take their minds off the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other, some look at it as the UFC doing everything they can to cash in, specifically with UFC 249, while having little regard for the safety of the fighters.
Din Thomas Offers Support For Dana White
You won’t hear Thomas complaining about the UFC holding events during this time. Speaking to Mike Pendleton, Thomas said the feeling he’s getting is that the fighters just want to do their jobs as they’ve been training hard (h/t BJPenn.com).
“Listen, I’m all for Dana making all the fights happen. He’s not asking fighters to do nothing they don’t want to do, every fighter wants to fight, he’s just trying to keep it going. There’s a lot of reasons why I’m sure Dana wants them [fights] to happen, one, there’s no other sports so it’s a good time to showcase MMA to fans because there’s nothing else going on. Two, it’s not as though fighters are like ‘Man I don’t really want to do it but I guess I have to do it because I need a paycheck.’ It’s not really what they’re saying, they all want to fight regardless of the coronavirus, I mean of course they want their paycheck but they all still want to fight because they’ve all been training.”
No matter what your feelings are on the situation, the plan is for UFC 249 to take place on April 18. White has claimed a new location has been locked up but he hasn’t revealed where yet. Reports have surfaced claiming that the UFC has been looking at Florida for the event.
In addition to that, White revealed to ESPN’s Brett Okamoto that some fights initially set for UFC 249 will be replaced. He didn’t say which fights would be impacted but he did say that Francis Ngannou vs. Jairzinho Rozenstruik could be moved to the event. Fight fans can rest easy knowing that the main event between UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson is still intact.
