Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
Current Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Lightweight champion, Khabib Nurmagomedov, is still trying to find a way out of Russia to make his scheduled title defense against Tony Ferguson, which is set to go down at UFC 249 on April 18, 2020. Where, exactly? No one knows.
But if “The Eagle” can’t take flight and leave his home country, the show will go on, as UFC President Dana White says the wheels must keep rolling with (or without) Nurmagomedov. And no amount of obstacles are going to prevent that.
“The challenges are that every time I get something figured out, I wake up the next day and the world has completely changed again,” White told the Heavyweight podcast (transcribed by MMA Fighting). “Everything that I work hard on the day before, me and my crew, has now fallen apart. It literally just happened to us again today. I woke up today and Khabib Nurmagomedov is in Russia and they just shut down all travel in and out of Russia.
“I woke up this morning and the whole world f*cking changed again,” he continued. “So back to the drawing board and we’re figuring this out right now as we’re speaking right now, I have people working on this thing as we speak. Listen, I am absolutely f*cking relentless and I said that this fight is going to go on and it will.”
Still, White has had to fight off numerous critics for his persistence on keeping the show going in the face of COVID-19. But White isn’t letting the chirping get to him, and is adamant that he and the promotion are going above and beyond to make sure anyone affected by the coronavirus will be taken care of.
“The thing is with my fighters, when they’re with me, they’re getting the best medical attention they could possibly get. Better if they were home alone by themselves or whatever their situation is,” he added. “I’ve reached out to everybody, not just my employees that work for me, but my fighters, too — if them or a loved one becomes ill and needs me, I’m here. I will do everything in my power to help and take care of them. That’s a given always. This fight will go on.”
As far as where UFC 249 will go down, that is still a big mystery, and White is not going to spill the beans to any “media scumbags.”
“A lot of these media guys are absolute and total f*cking scumbags,” he reiterated. “As soon as you let them know what you’re doing, all they’re trying to do is f*ck up everything that you’ve worked.
“So I literally told everyone of these guys to go f*ck themselves and I’m not telling any of them what I’m doing, where I’m doing it but know this — the fight is happening on April 18, some where on planet f*cking Earth and when you need to know, I’ll let you know,” he continued.
And so we continue to wait …