Why UFC Fight Island was a mirage all along

The concept and promotion of the UFC’s first card on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island promised so much character, but the event delivered very little, writes Alex Pattle

UFC's beach Octagon on 'Fight Island' in Abu Dhabi (UFC)

As the sand settles on the first UFC Fight Island event, we’re left to reflect in its golden shores on how the card in Abu Dhabi played out.

Actually, such imagery is rather deceptive, but that’s fitting. See, Fight Island was a mirage all along.

To the initiated, that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. A hazardous sport would be made all the more hazardous by stray, windswept sand and the blinding Yas Island sun, so a Fight Island event was never likely to be held in the open air of an Abu Dhabi beach.

Still, the concept and promotion promised character, and it has to be said that the event delivered very little.

Ahead of Saturday’s card, fans saw imagery of palm trees and lapping waves everywhere from promo videos to posters, and that even materialised in the form of a promotional Octagon on the beach on Yas Island – which, one glance at a map conveys, is as much an island as Legoland is a country.

Yet what fans at home got – they are still not allowed to watch in person, of course ­– was a big, black, domed tent, filled with a few light rigs and chairs for members of Abu Dhabi’s royal family.

Again, this is not to say that fans of the sport were misled – it would be ludicrous to actually stage fights in genuinely insular conditions. But a promotion that is increasingly being accused of ‘becoming the WWE’ in terms of its emphasis on entertainment should arguably have leaned more in that direction on Saturday.

Rather than simply erecting a soulless black tent and referring to it as ‘Flash Forum’, the company could have built a stage with some actual… flash?

UFC's Flash Forum – a tented structure on 'Fight Island' where bouts are being held (Zuffa/LLC via Getty Images)

Fighters could have entered between two oversized palm trees, the ring canvas could have depicted a beach. It’s incredibly hard to place oneself in the mind of someone as eccentric as Vince McMahon, to follow the WWE thread, but there were ideas to play with – fun (if somewhat cheesy) ones.

But the UFC and its president Dana White take themselves seriously to an almost superstitious extent, perhaps to their own detriment.

Thankfully for the UFC, there are two upsides.

Firstly, the in-ring action at UFC 251 delivered what its surroundings did not.

While Kamaru Usman’s victory over Jorge Masvidal was actually quite inevitable, Max Holloway’s second battle with Alexander Volkanovski for the featherweight title was intriguing. Meanwhile, Petr Yan and Jose Aldo’s clash over the vacant men’s bantamweight strap was back-and-forth in its brutality, and Rose Namajunas’ revenge on Jessica Andrade was hard-earned and well-deserved.

Secondly, and most importantly, there is time to improve Fight Island, just as there is room to.

While the long-term future of Fight Island is ambiguous – it could conceivably become an annual event once the world has returned to ‘normal’ – several more cards, the logistics of which have all been paid for by the Abu Dhabi government, are set to take place at Flash Forum over the coming weeks.

The UFC should look to introduce a little more colour with each event that goes by. Fight Island might lack actual shores, but the UFC can still test the water.