Barcelona slams the door on the UFC: they will not facilitate an event in which Ilia Topuria would defend her title

Last week, during the week of Topuria’s fight against Max Holloway, in which the Hispanic-Georgian champion successfully defended his featherweight title, UFC CEO Dana White confirmed his intentions to visit our country. «We need to go to Spain. There seem to be no venues available, but we will go to Madrid or Barcelona«he pointed out. This was news, since all eyes were on Madrid, but Barcelona had not officially appeared in the conversations. A possibility that could now have been closed from Barcelona itself.

According to RAC1, Barcelona City Council has slammed the door on the UFC and flatly refuses to facilitate the hypothetical event of the largest mixed martial arts league in its territory. The Barcelona council assures that they will “not” promote this sport and, therefore, an evening where one of the great current stars of MMA would clearly participate: the champion Ilia Topuria.

It is true that the largest national MMA league, WOW FC, recently held an event in Barcelona territory and even the AFL has been organizing several galas during its history, but putting obstacles in place is not something that the UFC likes, which would set his sights again on the Spanish capitalruling out the possibility of studying the Palau Sant Jordi as a venue to exploit. In fact, organizing an event in Spain is already a huge effort, taking into account that there are countries like Australia, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates that directly pay a million for the UFC to arrive within their borders.

Given this announcement, social networks have been flooded with messages critical of this decision that clearly seems more political than business. «They are shooting themselves in the foot« or »they won’t like the Spanish flags flying there« have been some of the phrases that have been read in the publications related to this news.

With this scenario, Madrid would be the only viable option, for the moment, to host the event. The CEO of the UFC already responded to ABC that they hate “football stadiums” to organize MMA evenings, but if they have to go to the Santiago Bernabéu they will go. On the other hand, the WiZink Center seemed the most suitable alternativebut the UFC requires at least four days availability to be able to develop all the events parallel to the night of the fights, so things would be complicated. Another final option that could be studied would be the Roig Arena, which is being built in Valencia, but it seems that it would not yet be inaugurated on the dates of arrival from the UFC.