White vows to be ‘first’ sport back; reveals ring girl, other canceled plans

Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

Dana White revealed some of the plans for their canceled show.

UFC 249 and all the planned shows after have all been indefinitely postponed. The call came from top executives from Disney and ESPN, with California’s governor reportedly being involved as well.

“We’ll see you soon. We will be the first event back!” White said on a live video stream after the announcement that all their events have been postponed. “I’m going to go home and sleep for f—king three days.”

As White spoke about his frustrations trying to put on this event during the coronavirus pandemic, he thanked his staff and revealed some of their canceled plans for UFC 249 along the way.

While it was already widely reported, the UFC didn’t acknowledge the venue until after the cancelation. White confirmed that it was indeed planned to be on tribal land at the Tachi Palace Resort. The UFC President says he will repay them for “having our back and standing ground” by bringing them a “big fight” on their first event back in California once the pandemic clears.

Many expected the UFC to downsize and retain as few people as possible, but White notes that they had plans to retain their commentary team, at least one ring girl and a backstage interviewer as well.

“Joe Rogan was absolutely working the event this Saturday. Thank you to Joe Rogan. And Laura Sanko was showing up and she was gonna do all the behind-the-scenes stuff. Everybody was all-in on this thing,” White revealed. “Brittney Palmer was going to be the ring card girl this Saturday. Thank you Brittney!”

White went on to say that “we’ll get everybody square, get everybody taken care of,” again repeating his promise to make things right for the fighters and staff that were involved at UFC 249.