Rizin’s Horiguchi-Asakura blockbuster to bring curtain down on tumultuous 12 months for Asian MMA
- ONE Championship and Rizin find ways to stage fights on the ground in Asia despite global pandemic
- UFC’s plans for Dana White’s Contender Series Asia on hold amid cloud of uncertainty, but Shanghai Performance Institute back up and running
While the coronavirus pandemic put paid to so many major sporting events in 2020, MMA in Asia and Asia’s legion of fighters found a way to soldier on. What’s more, there were opportunities for people to turn a coin when other athletes were cooling their heels at home, thinking of brighter days.
Many people have seen their careers basically put on hold for 12 months – and that’s been the case for fighters, too, just that there always seemed hope for so many that there could be a place on a card coming up, somewhere at some time.
That’s because promotions such as the UFC, first, and later the Singapore-based ONE Championship and Japan’s Rizin were able to find ways, and means, to stage cards.
The pandemic meant nothing much was happening on the ground for the UFC in Asia, as the US$13 million performance institute in Shanghai closed, and the much-anticipated launch of the first series of Dana White’s Contender Series Asia was put on hold. But there is light ahead, as the institute’s academy of emerging Chinese talent is back in full training, looking for bouts across the country’s regional circuits.
“We have a lot of big plans,” is how UFC’s senior vice-president of Asia-Pacific, Kevin Chang, explains it. “And we had a lot of big plans in 2020 with regards to the Dana White Contender Series and to ramping up UFC China events as well.
