UFC Abu Dhabi saw several home crowd favorites produce big wins on July 26.
Shara Magomedov beat Marc-Andre Barriault and earned fight of the night honors for a contest that saw ‘Bullet’ bounce back from the first loss of his career.
In the co-main event, Petr Yan defeated Marcus McGhee with a stylish performance that further proved that he’s still one of the best bantamweights on the planet.
However, the main event didn’t feature a fighter that has a close connection to Abu Dhabi or the fans that were in attendance at the Etihad Arena.
Reinier de Ridder earned a close decision win over Robert Whittaker but some fans chose to make for an early exit rather than sticking around to see how the middleweight clash played out.
UFC executive David Shaw says the promotion won’t pivot to always featuring regional fighters in main events
While the Etihad Arena wasn’t completely empty by the time that the main event kicked off, a lot of fans made it clear that they weren’t overly interested in the UFC Abu Dhabi headliner.
That isn’t because it wasn’t a worthy main event bout either, with a lot of fans who weren’t in attendance looking forward to the middleweight matchup.
The same thing happened last month during UFC Baku where Khalil Rountree could have beaten Jamahal Hill at the UFC Apex with how quiet the building was.
Standing in for Dana White at the post-fight press conference, UFC executive David Shaw was asked about this and whether the UFC would consider making a change to the way that they plan out overseas Fight Night events to avoid this happening.
He immediately shut down this suggestion, claiming that the UFC always wants to put on the best fights possible, and that means featuring both regional fighters and bringing overseas talent across.
“Uh, no. We’re not. Listen, the way that Dana puts together these fight cards, he’s striving, he’s accomplishing the best fights he can possibly make at that moment in time.
“We also, especially when we come back to a location pretty frequently, from some of the conversations that we’ve had with our partners, with fans, with broadcast partners, yes you get a lot of energy, you get a lot of local hometown support for the regional guys, but local fans want to see the global stars and why would anyone not want to see someone like Robert Whittaker?”
The lack of local interest at UFC Abu Dhabi doesn’t bother Reinier de Ridder
Regardless of how many people stuck around to watch him compete, Reinier de Ridder still earned the biggest win of his career on Saturday night.
The Dutchman has always been fairly unfazed by the glitz and the glamor of the sport, so you could likely predict his response to being asked about the lack of media that stuck around to speak with him at the post-fight press conference.
“I don’t care, but thanks for staying.”
The main event may have had some slower rounds towards the end but the fans who left early still missed out on a good back and forth matchup that featured an incredible third round where both men got hurt.