UFC 249: Fox Sports Accidentally Posts Conor McGregor vs. Tony Ferguson Fight On Official Website

UFC’s former broadcast partner Fox Sports accidentally showed Conor McGregor vs. Tony Ferguson as headliner of UFC 249 on its official website.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused UFC 249, one of the promotion’s biggest events this year some hurdles. Evidently, due to the lockdown of most countries across the world, many international fighters have been stuck in their homelands including reigning UFC lightweight champ Khabib “The Eagle” Nurmagmedov.

Despite the global crisis, UFC president Dana White remains adamant that the event will still take place as scheduled on April 18 and has insisted that he will release details of the location of the card shortly.

The pay-per-view event had originally been slated to take place at the Barclays Center in New York and will be headlined by a lightweight title fight between Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson as its main event. However, New York has been drastically hit by coronavirus and is evidently no longer a convenient place for the event to be held.

White finally confirmed that UFC events and operations will officially resume on April 18 onwards which will begin with UFC 249. The UFC boss also confirmed that lightweight contender Justin Gaethje will challenge Tony Ferguson for the interim lightweight belt, MMA Junkie reported.

“I’m not going to be able to get the international fighters, all of them into the U.S., so I have a private island. I’m going to start flying them all into the private island and start doing international fights from there. So as of April 18, the UFC is back up and running,” White announced.

At this point, everything seems to be going well for UFC. However, prior to White’s official announcement and resolutions, the promotion’s former broadcast partner Fox Sports created a bit of a confusion about the said event.

On its official website, the details of UFC 249 states a main event fight between McGregor and Ferguson, an ideal fight that the UFC has never confirmed in the past. Give Me Sport managed to keep a screenshot photo of what seemed to be an obvious admin error on the part of Fox Sports.

McGregor vs. Ferguson could happen soon but certainly not at UFC 249. Prior to the official announcement, Ferguson was already reportedly offered a fight against Gaethje but insisted that he was only prepared to remain on the card if he would be facing either Khabib or McGregor.

White is expected to make further announcements about UFC 249 in the following days.