Dana White addresses rumors of the UFC Apex closing down, confirms return to China ‘at the tip of this yr’

After a successful opening to season 8 of Dana White’s Contender Series, the UFC President was asked concerning the speculation surrounding the game’s most controversial arena.

As UFC Vegas 100 looms ominously over the horizon, rumors that The Apex in Las Vegas might be shutting down, albeit temporarily, proceed to flow into online – with the promotion also plotting some major international events towards the tip of 2024/start of 2025.

Dana White addresses rumors of the UFC Apex closing down

Over the past several weeks, rumors of the controversial arena being temporarily shut down for renovations have been strife online; especially amongst fans who have gotten increasingly frustrated with the lackluster Fight Night events being held there of late.

Whilst Dana White did confirm that the Apex will probably be getting some major upgrades because the UFC invests between $20-25 million in additional renovations, he was unsure what it will mean for the promotion’s schedule.

“We’re doing a $20 million expansion here so we’re going to speculate numerous money on this place,” White told reporters after a solid first episode of season 8 of the Contender Series.

“We’ve got some pretty big announcements coming up in the subsequent six months so it’ll all kind of make sense as to what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

“I don’t think it’s true that it’s closing,” he later added, reaffirming that any closure would lead to the promotion traveling to more locations, each domestic and internationally, for events.

“I don’t understand how that’s going to work out, yeah I don’t know enough about that but we’re open to traveling around to many alternative places now, more open than I used to be a few years ago.”

So, where is the UFC targeting for its next slate of huge international shows?

Three major international locations are on the UFC radar for 2024/2025

Just a number of hours earlier, White appeared on the most recent episode of The Pat McAfee Show to debate each the success of the business and what’s next for the promotion moving forward.

Specifically, White was asked about his thoughts on UFC 304 in Manchester being held in the midst of the night and whether he has plans to bring similarly stacked PPVs to other international markets.

“Yeah, we’ve been doing that [middle of the night thing] for years; the issue is that once you go global, you’re in other time zones – we all the time attempt to stay on American time zone but sometimes we’re not.

“We’ve got early fights, we’ve got late fights, we’ve got fights in the midst of the afternoon, it gets all mixed depending on where we’re going.”

So, where are the UFC going?

Well, White first read off an inventory of confirmed locations including Perth, Australia for UFC 305, a Fight Night card in Paris, France for September, and UFC 308 in Abu Dhabi in October – before seemingly confirming two recent locations: Edmonton (Canada), and Macau (China).

“We’re cruising around here soon, we’re going to Perth this week, we’ve got Paris [in] France coming up, Abu Dhabi in October, Edmonton [in] Canada, and Macau [in] China – so we’re traveling around at the tip of this yr.”

Edmonton has hosted two UFC events in 2017 and 2019, with Macau having hosted Fight Night cards in 2012 and 2014 respectively – the promotion has not returned to China since 2019.

Yet White also teased that there might be one other major recent location added to that list, should middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis defeat former king Israel Adesanya this weekend at UFC 305.

“[It’s a] big fight, each time guys hate one another like this then the fight normally finally ends up sucking, but I even have a very good feeling that this one won’t… You’ve one among these situations where all the pieces is on the road because they hate one another a lot.

“If he [Dricus] can beat Izzy and produce that belt back to South Africa, obviously we’ll do an event there.”

UFC 305 goes down live from the RAC Arena in Perth on Saturday, August 17.

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