Conor McGregor tries to throw chair at Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205 press conferenceUFC card scheduled for April in Buffalo
The UFC 205 press conference on Thursday afternoon was an absolute spectacle. The event leading up to the fight between Eddie Alvarez and Conor McGregor had laughter, fan chants, costumes, belt theft, an attempted chair throw, and a walk-off … all in about five minutes.
First, Alvarez walked out on the stage, but found himself out there alone … as McGregor, per usual, was running late. That didn’t stop McGregor’s fans in attendance from heckling Alvarez, which he seemed to enjoy, and egged them on:
From there, though, Alvarez would only wait so long, and after sitting around onstage getting heckled by McGregor fans, decided enough was enough. So he got up and walked offstage, leaving Dana White up there, just kinda hanging.
UFC card scheduled for April in Buffalo
Even as it prepares for historic UFC 205, the organization’s first Madison Square Garden event, on Saturday, Ultimate Fighting Championships is preparing to announce an event to be held at KeyBank Center in April, the Buffalo News has learned.
UFC president Dana White is expected to announce that the Octagon will be coming to Buffalo Tuesday on ESPN’s Sports Center, exact time undetermined.
It will be a pay-per-view event on Saturday, April 8 and will be designated UFC 211. The makeup of the card is expected to be announced later. Ticketts are expected to go on sale in early February when promotional events involving main events fighters planned.
UFC’s debut in New York State this week is major news in the world of mixed
martial arts.. Until March, mixed martial arts fights were illegal in the state. Interest in Saturday’s event at the Garden has reached such heights that resale ticket prices have has an asking price as high as $25,000 according to some reports.
The last time the UFC put on a show in New York, Ken Shamrock fought Oleg Taktarov to a 33-minute draw in the evening’s “superfight championship” main event.
It was September 8, 1995, and despite drawing a company-record crowd of 9,000 people to Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium, UFC 7 was kind of a disaster. The 11-fight card featured no weight classes, no rounds and time limits that were treated more like suggestions than actual rules.
Midway through, a generator blew and caused a power outage in the arena. Because of the resulting delay, the event ran over its allotted time on pay-per-view, and many customers had their TV broadcasts go dark before the final bouts.
Widespread refunds had to be issued, and what should have been a solid success for the fledgling UFC turned out to be a dud. Though nobody knew it at the time, it would be 21 years before the Octagon made it back to the Empire State.
The road back into the New York market was far longer and more arduous than anybody could have expected.
Despite the PPV failure of UFC 7, company officials were buoyed by that event’s live attendance numbers and announced a return to New York in early 1997. Unfortunately, they were denied sanctioning rights days before their planned UFC 12 event was set to go down in Niagara Falls.
At the last minute, they had to pack up and move the show to tiny Dothan, Alabama.
MMA Fighting’s Dave Meltzer captured the resulting chaos:
[UFC ownership] chartered a jet from Niagara Falls to Montgomery, filled with 200 fighters, entourages, officials, reporters and some fans. The flight was delayed because of weight issues. Luggage had to be thrown off the plane and left in Niagara Falls. They landed in Alabama at 2 a.m. Several buses were then rented to take the crew to Dothan, where they dropped people off at a number of different hotels. Fighters didn’t get rooms until 5 a.m., and everyone had to check out by noon due to a religious convention coming in, that had booked every hotel in town.
After working around the clock, they were still painting the canvas on the Octagon in front of the fans even after the first match was scheduled to go into the cage, causing the prelims to start 15 minutes late, but they made it on time for the pay-per-view.
