As someone with significant experience in the Montreal MMA scene, Stephane Patry made it clear that the local promotion for UFC 186 in Montreal left a lot to be desired.
The former manager of longtime UFC welterweight kingpin Georges St-Pierre joined MMAFightng.com’s Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, where he delved into the UFC’s decision to produce a show in Montreal without some of the marquee talent from the region.
“I was surprised when they announced a show in April because I thought they would do a show in Montreal with MacDonald fighting for the title. But they decided to do it in July with McGregor and Aldo. So obviously this hurts the card because there is not a marquee fighter on the card that is from here. With GSP on the sidelines, that hurts Montreal. It’s very complicated because they didn’t really have the time to build the guys like Aubin-Mercier, Cote, who is at the end of his career. It’s a complicated situation not to do a big show like that in Montreal without a marquee fighter. They decided to do it anyways.”
Apart from the questionable timing for the event, Patry complained that the UFC barely conducted any local promotion for the fight card. Even though Steve Bosse has removed from the fight card after it was announced that Quinton Jackson would be back on the card, Patry admits that he was terribly underutilized by the promotion. By not using him as a ticket seller, Patry believes the UFC missed an opportunity to sell more tickets.
“Also, I noticed that there is a lot of people that ever since we signed Bosse to fight on the card, that are like, ‘What, there is a UFC event this weekend in Montreal? I didn’t know.’ So the local promotion right now is not very good here. I don’t know what that’s all about, but a lot of people are now buying tickets because they know Steve is fighting.”
Transcription taken from MMAMania.com
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