TORONTO — The UFC is returning to Vancouver.
Tom Wright, executive vice-president and GM for UFC operations in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, confirmed Wednesday that Rogers Arena will host a televised Fight Night show on Aug. 27.
It’s the UFC’s first visit to Vancouver since UFC 174 in June 2014. The city was also home to UFC 131 in June 2011 and UFC 115 in June 2010.
"We were really interested in making sure that we came to Western Canada," Wright said. "Some of the best fans are in Western Canada … Clearly Vancouver’s a world-class city. And so we’re really excited about the opportunity to go back there. Vancouver’s been a good city for us."
There is no word yet on the main event. A welterweight title bout would seem unlikely even if No. 1 contender Rory (Red King) MacDonald, a native of Kelowna, B.C., who fights out of Montreal, beats No. 2 Stephen (Wonderboy) Thompson in a battle of top welterweight contenders Saturday in Ottawa.
Current 170-pound champion (Ruthless) Robbie Lawler has a scheduled July 30 bout in Atlanta with No. 3 Tyron Woodley, a date too close to the Aug. 27 Vancouver show.
MacDonald fought on two of three previous UFC cards in Vancouver.
Former lightweight champion Anthony (Showtime) Pettis will make his featherweight debut on the August card against seventh-ranked contender Charles Oliveira of Brazil. South African middleweight Garreth (Soldier Boy) McLellan will take on Italian Alessio Di Chirico.
The UFC plans a third show in Canada later this year, likely a pay-per-view with Toronto, Calgary and Edmonton among possible venues.
The Vancouver show will be televised by Fox south of the border, only the second Fox show to be held outside the U.S. — the first was headlined by Alexander (The Mauler) Gustafsson and Anthony Johnson in Stockholm, in January 2015.
In Canada, it will be shown on CTV2 and RDS in Quebec with the preliminaries on TSN2 and RDS2.
The Vancouver card falls between two pay-per-view shows: UFC 202 on Aug. 20 in Las Vegas and UFC 203 on Sept. 10 in Cleveland. A Sept. 3 event is to be streamed on UFC Fight Pass from Hamburg, Germany.
Saturday’s televised card in Ottawa will be the UFC’s 20th show in Canada. Other cities to host cards are Calgary, Halifax, Montreal, Quebec City, Saskatoon, Toronto and Winnipeg.
Canada was the fourth country to host a UFC event after the U.S., England and Northern Ireland and used to be billed as one of the UFC’s top markets.
In 2008, when the UFC debuted in Canada at UFC 83 in Montreal, the UFC held 20 shows in three countries — the U.S. (16), England (3), and Canada (1).
But UFC shows are rarer north of the border these days as the UFC expands around the globe. The UFC held 41 events in 2015 with stops in Australia (2), Brazil (5), Sweden (1), Canada (2), Germany (1), Ireland (1), Japan (1), Mexico (2), the Philippines (1), Poland (1), Scotland (1), South Korea (1) and the U.S. (22)
The UFC has held 82 shows since the 2014 event in Vancouver. Only three were in Canada (Saskatoon, Montreal and Halifax). Of the 168 cards between that 2014 Vancouver show and the initial UFC Montreal event, 14 were in Canada.
The UFC has not been back to Toronto since UFC 165 in September 2013. It has held 112 shows since.
The UFC planned three to five shows in Canada in 2015. Only two came to fruition — UFC 186 in Montreal in April and a televised card in Saskatoon in August.
