To understand why the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) decided to spend untold fortunes on an audience-free fight at an Arabian island during a pandemic, you need to understand the company’s president, Dana White. He’s a 51-year-old, Irish Catholic, former amateur boxer from Boston who’s become famous for turning mixed martial arts into a multi-billion dollar business. And for doing whatever he wants.
In this case, Dana sought to continue fighting in 2020, even though until March it was transparent that COVID-19 would disrupt the plans of its registered competitors, many of whom live outside the United States. To avoid this problem, White announced that the company would circumvent the restrictions by temporarily moving its operations to what the company just called “a foreign location”.
On June 9, the company revealed that it had en requested the help of the UAE government to create an “eighth emirate” on The island of Yas in Abu Dhabi. This so-called “Safe Zone” covered only a portion of the island’s 25 square kilometers and would allow them to organize competitions from around the world. Dates have been set for two weeks, July 11-25.
For the security of the event, there were no tickets to the so-called “Fight Island”. There was no hearing either. The island of Yas remained absolutely closed to tourism, and to get there you needed an invitation.
My trip to the island was the result of logistical mess from all major sports news agencies in Australia. Even if an Australian champion took part in the fight, no journalist could leave the continent. So, as I lived abroad, I was given one of dozens of foreign media posts as an Australian representative.
But what would I do there? I made a bag, curious to know.
Here I am, I do a COVID on arrival
Travelling at the time of the pandemic means more rules, fewer planes and no guarantee of leaving the runway. I arrived at the airport concerned, but soon discovered that an agreement with Fight Island meant I was going to enjoy certain privileges.
With a negative coVID-19 check and a certificate of fitness to fly, I went to check-in where I applied for a Abu Dhabi visa, which I did not have.
“Umm… Fight Island?” I responded.
That’s all I needed to say and, with a sign of approval, my price ticket of economic elegance was changed to business elegance and my immigration “took over.”
The police escort from the airport to the hotel.
I appreciated the prestige of minor celebrities among the aircraft staff: we had learned that a passenger was going to Fight Island. When I landed, another bus picked me up and escorted me through the back door of immigration, took off my passport and stamped me. After “customs,” I drove through the airport staff in a black SUV and escorted through the police to Yas Island.
On Fight Island, I felt like I had joined a human colony that organized its last combat opposed to the zombie apocalypse. Humanity had to be from the global outside, so excessive measures were taken to ensure that the virus that brought down civilization simply did not enter. The army patrolled the borders of the “safe zone,” while I assumed that the main source of entertainment in this strange new world was to watch survivors fight one by one in a cage.
When the SUV arrived at the hotel, I asked to stay in the vehicle. Men in dangerous fabric shoes grabbed my luggage to sterilize it and the laser beam of an infrared thermometer gave the impression on my forehead. Once the men with dangerous fabrics protected the property, I took it to my room.
Quarantine at the hotel.
Each newcomer to the island was quarantined for 48 hours, leaving only a brief era each day to get a COVID-19 test. Once authorized, I lose to engage with visitors (event officials, UFC staff, wrestlers and journalists) and explore the island.
There is a golf course, an F1/super car race track and a beach with jet skis and beach volleyball fields that I receive in the 47 degree heat.
All quiet and deserted
This sounds excessive, but walking in this combination of luxury and relative security gave me the impression that the United Arab Emirates was employing Fight Island as a propaganda training. The events, broadcast around the world, were in fact an announcement of a post-COVID-19 holiday destination and a public relations exercise for the containment functions of a country with more than 60,000 active (and growing) COVID instances.
However, it was clever. And yet, although he had spent weeks dreaming of that, the competition had been educated all his life. Months of disciplined concentration would be displayed to hone their strategy and prepare for their wartime parties, and only a handful of PERIODISTAS and UFC staff were there to see it.
Setting up for the big event
We all packed in a very impressive tent: it was not imaginable that the competition would fight outside, even in the early hours of the morning, when the mercury was pushing at 37 degrees, and when we settled, the 26 fighters ready for their matches out of sight, waiting to be called to the Octagon where they would have the opportunity to develop their incredible martial arts skills.
I was not allowed to take pictures of the occasion itself, but this photo is representative of the public
The occasion began without cheers, without boos, without drunks. It wasn’t the game as we know it. Without a crowd, I can hear all the sound of bones on the bones; each of the air breaths of the limbs that sink into the flesh. But the knockouts made no noise, just a silence and a frame falling to the ground as a referee waved his hands to indicate that the fight was over.
The impossibility of Fight Island surprised me after the coup de grace. There were 50 other people on a personal island in the Middle East watching fighting by fashionable gladiators in unarmed combat. How did I get here? I was fascinated, and each fight merged with the next in a violent ballet. Then it’s over. Three world champions were crowned and made history.
It was 10am when we all went out in the sun, and it was that instead of sleeping, the beers in the hotel bar were more appropriate.
This smart thing for photos
The amount of cash UFC paid to protect the island, sending other people’s cargoes to the Middle East, hosting them, and organizing occasions, was not disclosed. There is no doubt that a partnership with a local government that owns an airline, the island, the police and the military would have eased the monetary burden.
However, in the words of Dana White: “Fight Island is so beloved and so crazy that it is almost successful.” It was a rare occasion that, realistically, given the infrastructure and the sure taste of flexibility purchased through the government, can only take place in a city like Abu Dhabi.
For 3 weeks, there was a post-COVID-19 world, with just over 2000 humans on an island in the desert. A dry race to the end of the world? An ad for the UAE? A love deal for the UFC? Probably an aggregate of the 3. But if you don’t discover a solution for COVID-19 within a moderate period of time, Fight Island can be the style of how we and entertainment supply, at least until the end of the pandemic.
I returned my luggage to the black SUV and joined a procession of other vehicles. With a police escort, we all returned to Abu Dhabi airport.
I stay on Fight Island, and after arriving at the airport, an attendant passed me my boarding pass, this time in economy class.
Follow Peter on Instagram and Twitter