UFC 259: Dana White wants Texas arena event after Covid-19 mask mandate lifted; thinks Israel Adesanya can headline
- UFC president reveals he called Governor of Texas and is ‘working on getting Houston done’
- ‘If he [Adesanya] keeps doing what he’s doing … it’s inevitable he can sell out huge arena,’ says White
With UFC 259 set to go down in Las Vegas at the promotion’s Apex facility on Saturday night, middleweight kingpin Israel Adesanya has a shot at becoming a dual-division champion.
And if he does defeat light heavyweight champ Jan Blachowicz, “The Last Stylebender” could have a chance of headlining the first UFC event back in front of a full crowd, after Texas Governor Greg Abbott this week lifted the state’s Covid-19 mask mandate, allowing businesses to resume at 100 per cent capacity.
“If he [Adesanya] keeps doing what he’s doing and continues to win, continues to break records, and do these things, like he said, it’s inevitable that he can sell out huge arenas,” UFC president Dana White said at Thursday’s pre-event press conference.
Adesanya has seen his star power continually rise over his three-year tenure in the organisation. The 31-year-old Nigerian-Kiwi has already headlined in front of the UFC’s largest ever audience – more than 57,000 at UFC 243 in Marvel Stadium, Melbourne, when he took the undisputed middleweight title from Robert Whittaker.
So it is safe to assume capturing another title would boost his popularity all that much higher, making him a possible candidate to kick off a return to normalcy and get back to filling out crowds.