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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
The UFC's attempts earlier this year to announce several future return dates to certain regions didn't really work out too well.
After cancelling announced dates for Toronto and Montreal in Canada, they've now officially pushed back their return to London as well.
The UFC announced back in March that they'd be returning to London on Feb. 28. However, with that date now playing host to UFC 184 in Los Angeles, that's no longer the case.
In an interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, the UFC's Chief Global Brand Officer, Garry Cook, explained that they're focusing on the big Sweden show in January for the region while leaving Feb. 28 alone to keep the attention on the pay-per-view.
"It's very important for Alexander Gustafsson, we wanted to place that one into that market," Cook said, "and we also have the L.A. show with Ronda on that card and with Belfort and Weidman on that card, and so to make some adjustments, we're going to take ourselves out of that London date, and we're going to move ourselves to another London date further down in the year."
"...So we had to make some changes, and as we always say with our business, it is subject to change, that's just making sure the fans are taken care of, we don't want to overdo it and make sure we get focused on that L.A. event at UFC 184 in Los Angeles."
Penick's Analysis: This was expected, and also why it's not surprising that the UFC didn't actually announce locations for the dates scheduled in 2015. They often target markets with certain fights in mind - i.e., Gustafsson fighting in Sweden this January - and that sometimes necessitates moving things around if the fights available to them don't fit a previously announced location. It's unfortunate for fans in London, or those who were hoping to travel to London in February, but it works better for the UFC to have the two title fights in L.A. on that date.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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