Dana White says UFC Sphere card will be one and done: ‘Nobody can do it again’

The UFC continues planning its long-awaited (and much hyped) Sphere debut as if it won’t happen again. That’s because, according to Dana White, that won’t happen.

UFC 306 is scheduled to take place on September 14th at the Sphere in Las Vegas and will be the promotion’s second annual Noche UFC event in honor of Mexican Independence Day. But beyond that, the prospect of a second event is unlikely – because there will be no correspondence with the first.

“I’m telling you right now, we literally went through the storyboards on this two days ago,” White told reporters at an event. UFC on ESPN 56 post-event press conference Saturday in St. “This will be the sickest live event in combat sports anyone has ever seen.”

“It will never be done again. This will be one and done, just because I wanted to do this. Everyone, when I said I wanted to do this, said, ‘How? How are you going to fight there? It’s so hard. That’s it too. That’s a lot. That’s the kind of thing I love. We’ve already spent a lot of money on this. No one will ever be able to do that again because no one would spend the money to do it. No one is going to spend money to do what I’m doing there now.”

Since his announcement that the UFC would go there, White has promised that the event will be “the biggest live combat sports show anyone has ever seen” and also acknowledged that the preparation is a “huge challenge.”

Sphere has hosted residencies for several musical artists, including U2 and Adele, but has yet to host a combat sports event. From now on, the UFC will be first.

“This is going to be a masterpiece, man,” White said. “I’m telling you now and this is a fact, it will never be done again. Do you know what will happen when I do this event at Sphere? All other events that happen there will be, ‘Motherf*cker’. What do we do now? How do we come close to competing with that?’ We will blow the doors off anything that enters that arena again. I guarantee it.

Sphere opened in September 2023, after five years of construction that cost US$2.3 billion. It has a capacity for 18,600 people, or around 20,000 if you count the seats on the floor. The interior contains the world’s largest LED screen at 160,000 square feet.

This story originally appeared on MMA Junkie