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UFC 249 postponement in Tweets: MMA fighters react to coronavirus scratch

On Thursday afternoon, UFC president Dana White announced the controversial UFC 249 card has officially been postponed due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The news came just days after it was revealed the promotion had booked the event, headlined by an interim lightweight title fight between Tony Ferguson and Justin Gaethje, at the Tachi Palace Resort Casino in Lemoore, Calif., on tribal land not subject to a mandatory stay-at-home order issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The pay-per-view originally was slated to feature the highly anticipated fight between reigning champion Khabib Nurmagomedov and Ferguson inside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. But when New York governor Andrew Cuomo implemented strict new guidelines on mass gatherings, the promotion sought a new location.

The fight card then took a major hit when Nurmagomedov became stranded in Russia, and was forced to bow out of a fifth booking against Tony Ferguson. Promotion officials then tabbed Gaethje as the replacement while moving the entire card across the country.

Until today, White planned to proceed at Tachi Palace with extensive testing of all attendees and no audience. But he later broke the news to ESPN that the “powers that be” with his broadcast partner asked to him cancel the event.

Here is how the MMA community reacted to the news.

This article first appeared at MMA Fighting – All Posts


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UFC 249 Cancelled, All Scheduled Events Postponed Indefinitely

Video: Dana White cancels UFC 249 at the request of ESPN and Disney