Dana White secures private ‘fight island’ with UFC 249’s Ferguson vs Gaethje set for tribal lands – could 2020 get any weirder?

If you told me five years ago in 2020 that US President Donald Trump would be taking serious heat for mishandling a global pandemic that sounds oddly like a brand of beer, while UFC president Dana White declared to the world he’s secured a private island to host fights because of a global lockdown à la Mortal Kombat or Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon, I’m not sure what I would say to you.

I might ask if you are off your medication, what recreational drugs you have been taking, or what mental institute granted you early release for good behaviour.

Welcome to 2020 people. If there was any doubt truth is stranger than fiction, it’s gone out the window, plunging hundreds of metres to the earth, crashing into a reality where abnormal is now the norm. Nothing fazes me any more. You could tell me tomorrow the Death Star had been spotted on the horizon and Godzilla was rampaging through Tokyo’s streets and I wouldn’t bat an eye.

On top of all this, White has locked down UFC 249 finally, and get this, it will reportedly be taking place on tribal land in a Native American casino, just south of Fresno, California.

First, let’s recap how UFC 249 came together because this will go down as one of the strangest fights of all-time and is now way weirder than an episode of Netflix’s Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness. The UFC has been trying to get lightweight title holder Khabib Nurmagomedov to fight Tony Ferguson for years. It has been cancelled five times, once where Ferguson tripped over a TV cable while doing press for the fight and buggered his knee.

White has publicly stated he admits this fight is cursed, because if you try to do something five times and fail every time, that may be a textbook definition of insanity.

Nurmagomedov had flown to the United Arab Emirates where the fight was seemingly set to take place on April 18 after New York, or pretty much anywhere in the world for that matter, became a no-go because of the coronavirus. But then the Russian was turned away at the border and put on a plane back home.

UFC 249: Dana ‘starting to believe’ Khabib vs Ferguson is ‘cursed’

Nurmagomedov then threw some shade at fans and Ferguson for claiming he was ducking the fight, as he sat at home doing Instagram Live sessions and interviews. Ferguson said he’d fight Conor McGregor, but the Irishman is also stuck in lockdown in Ireland.

Enter American Justin Gaethje, who is next in line as the No-4 ranked lightweight, and White stating he has a location “somewhere on earth” signed and sealed, which turned out to be the Tachi Palace Casino Resort, which, according to its website, bills itself as the “perfect California vacation with all the perks of a Las Vegas resort and none of the Las Vegas hassle”.

But White wasn’t done dropping media bombs, as he also stated he’s secured an island for the next two months, and will be flying fighters in for what totally sounds like the plot of the 1995 horribly awesome B-movie Mortal Kombat.

Or, if you fancy something a bit more classic, 1973’s Enter the Dragon, which features Bruce Lee as “Lee” heading to a crime lord’s private island where he is hosting martial arts fights, as Lee looks to help out a British intelligence officer.

I swear I’m not making any of this up, it’s just too good to be true.

MMA junkies are swarming all over message boards and Reddit as to where this island might be. Is it in international waters, part of a rogue state, or maybe even Little Halls Pond Cay in the Bahamas, which is owned by Johnny Depp and currently up for sale for a cool US$75 million?

Did Atlantis rise from the ashes now that sea levels are descending because Covid-19 has put a stop to global pollution like nobody’s business? How about the island of Dr Moreau, as last I read Beast Folk are immune to the coronavirus. Maybe this is going to be like the Fyre Festival and we will get Ja Rule puffing cigars on a Sea-Doo serving everyone ham sandwiches?

More importantly, is White going to rename this island ‘Fight Island’, and set the whole thing up like a reality TV show? Either way, count me in, this sounds like a logistical nightmare but great entertainment, and everyone is starving for a little bit of that right now cooped up amid the lockdown.

While Fight Island will have its challenges, White still needs to pull off UFC 249 first before most of us take our sceptics hats off. A quick Google Maps search shows the nearest hospital to the casino is at least a half an hour drive away, and reports are they had no idea the fight was pencilled in, something usually set up months before a scheduled tilt.

The casino had already closed due to Covid-19 back on March 20, noting on its website that it was “prioritising the health and wellness of its guests and staff”. Now the UFC is coming to town, and it looks like money has trumped all once again.

So, back to UFC 249. Is Ferguson going to continue his win streak, or will Gaethje snatch the interim lightweight title? Will McGregor, or Nurmagomedov, fight the winner on Fight Island as White and the UFC look to skirt international travel bans?

Whatever happens, this is already amazing and both a bold PR move and blatant stunt. A made for Netflix series rolling out right before our eyes. The year 2020 has become the year of the absurd, and as we all waste away in our homes finding things to kill time, maybe it’s time we all embrace the strange.