UFC Boss Dana White Plans to Host Fights on a Private Island During the Pandemic

At first this meant filming fights without a live audience, limiting the number of people in an event space at any given time, and imposing strict hygiene guidelines on all athletes and production staff. But now White is taking things to a whole new level.

Speaking with TMZ Sports, White revealed his plan to save UFC 249 on April 18: he is in the process of securing access to private island, where he hopes to be able to safely host fights for the duration of quarantine.

"I'm a day or two away from securing a private island," he said. "I have a private island that I've secured, we're getting the infrastructure put in now, so I'm gonna start doing the international fights too, with international fighters. I won't be able to get international fighters all into the US, so I have a private island I'm going to start flying them all into, and do international fights from there. So as of April 18, the UFC is back up and running."

If this setup sounds vaguely familiar, that might be because it's pretty much the exact premise of the video game Dead or Alive, in which world-class fighters are invited to a remote island to compete in a highly exclusive combat competition.

White also admitted in the interview that keeping UFC going amid increasingly uncertain global events has been the toughest endeavor of his career. "We've been working on this since, you know, the world fell apart," he said. "Every day when we would work on something, we'd wake up the next day and the world would change. This is definitely the hardest thing I've tried to do, ever."