UFC Managing Director for Operations in Canada, Australia and New Zealand Tom Wright recently spoke to Sherdog.com about Saturday’s UFC 193 event in Melbourne. He explained the hurdles the company had to overcome before being able to bring a UFC event to Melbourne.
“It’s huge. I’ve said this many times: Mixed martial arts might be a individual sport, but what we get done in terms of the regulatory efforts to bring our sport to so many different parts of the world, different countries and a city like Melbourne … it takes a real team effort,” Wright said. “We’ve been at this for many, many years, and you’re finally seeing the results of it. Look at this crowd. Fed Square is an iconic part of Melbourne, and to have this kind of turn out on a Thursday is impressive; and Etihad is going to be amazing on Sunday.”
“The record is 55,724,” Wright said. “I was there at UFC 129 because I opened the Canadian office, and there are a lot of similarities to what we had to do in Ontario to bring our first event to Toronto and what we had to do here in Victoria, where we’re hoping to set some records.”
“We’re looking forward to setting some records,” he said with a smile.
Ronda Rousey will fight Holly Holm in the main event of Saturday’s show. The main card starts on pay-per-view at 10 PM ET.
