UFC president, Dana White has always been about growing the sport of mixed martial arts around the world.
The UFC has champions and fighters from around the globe, but one continent that is starting to take over is Africa. They have Kamaru Usman, Israel Adesanya, and Francis Ngannou as champions and contenders like Sodiq Yusuff, among countless others.
With their rise, many have called for a UFC Africa event, which does seem likely, but according to White, he plans to build a UFC PI over there so he can help develop the next generation of African fighters.
“Yeah, we always believed that this would be big globally, that we could create talent from all over the world. But, you know what makes sense? Africa is finally catching up and coming in. I’m going to build a PI over there,” Dana White said to BroBible. “Anytime you find a place where people grow up in hard times you are going to find talented, incredible not just fighters but athletes of all kinds. The question is, what resources do they have to train, to learn, and things like that? I’m going to build a PI over there and I’ll tell you what, you’re going to see some bad dudes coming out of Africa over the next five, six years.”
The UFC has their main PI in Las Vegas and opened up one in Shanghai to develop the Chinese fighters. At UFC 261 we saw a couple of fighters from the Shanghai PI make their UFC debut so having them train there is no doubt a benefit for the UFC and the sport of MMA.
When Dana White and the UFC will build the PI in Africa is uncertain, it’s also not known where in Africa they would build it. Nigeria seems like one that would make sense due to the fact they have champions like Usman and Adesanya. The Governor has said they want to work with Usman to develop more fighters, so perhaps that is the landing spot for the African UFC PI.
What do you make of Dana White saying he’s going to build a PI in Africa?
