UFC Exploring Major Stadium Show for January 2013

NEW YORK — With 2012 barely one-third over, the UFC is already looking well into the future, even into the next calendar year. While they can’t predict what might happen in fights, it’s part of the business to be prepared for any…

Esther Lin, MMA Fighting

NEW YORK — With 2012 barely one-third over, the UFC is already looking well into the future, even into the next calendar year. While they can’t predict what might happen in fights, it’s part of the business to be prepared for any eventuality, and apparently, if one particular scenario plays out, the UFC would produce its second stadium show.

Among the possible locales for the event? The massive Cowboys Stadium in Dallas, along with Toronto’s Rogers Centre, the site of the biggest MMA event in North American history, April 2011’s UFC 129.

What could necessitate about such a setting? White wouldn’t offer specifics, but in the past he has been candid in acknowledging that a major stadium show would need a major main event.

We’ve been talking to [Dallas Cowboys’ owner Jerry] Jones and his crew about doing a fight in Dallas’ Texas Stadium, but we need a fight that’s big enough to do it,” White said on Thursday after the UFC on FOX 3 press conference. “The last fight I was going to try to make there was Brock [Lesnar] and Fedor [Emelianenko].

That fight, of course, never happened after Emelianenko signed with Strikeforce instead of the UFC.

But what kind of superfight could draw upwards of 50,000 fans to a huge complex? Could it be Jon Jones and Anderson Silva? To those questions, White played coy.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll see what happens. We’ll see what we end up putting together.”

But although he suggested no one was specifically lined up for a major stadium show, it seemed clear he does have something particular in mind. For now we’ll have to wait and see if things play out the way he envisioned, otherwise, he said, the show would probably end up in Las Vegas.