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In a lot of the classic markets around the world, it feels like the UFC is a bit of a fading concern. The Canada boom is long over, the J-MMA glory days have been gone for more than a decade. Even the UFC’s trips to Brazil feel like no real big deal anymore. Ireland’s MMA craze came and went with the McGregor era, and experiments with regular UFC cards in Germany and Sweden produced absolutely nothing.
There are still markets where the UFC looks like it has room to expand, however. China seems to be a steady partner, for one, and Middle East is hungry for all the combat sports it can get right now. Most notably, though, if UFC Noche was any sign last year, MMA is starting to gain a real fanbase down in Mexico.
The promotion’s first trip back to the country since 2019 this past Saturday highlighted how much it needs to keep putting on cards for its Hispanic fanbase. Cain Velasquez may not have been the crossover star that the UFC had hoped for, but a steady diet of raiding Combate and Entram gym has provided Dana White & co. with a healthy stable of Mexican and Mexican-American talent that get real national support. Fans showed up in droves.
UFC at altitude is not good MMA
That said, despite clear signs that the company had learned from past forrays to the CDMX, it’s clear that Mexico City is not built for MMA. The UFC didn’t put on a single fight over the lightweight division for their Moreno vs. Royval 2 fight card, but it didn’t seem to matter. At 7,349 feet in elevation the climate was still brutally punishing for multiple five minute rounds of action…
It’s a fact that was clear in the results all night. Fighters up and down UFC Mexico City struggled with pace and cardio. Most notably, unfortunately, in the main and co-main events, where both Brandon Moreno and Yair Rodriguez looked like they were trying hard to measure their exertion. There were a couple standout fights and performances, but most of the evening felt like it was marked by lackluster action. The crowd was hyped, but the fighters couldn’t match it.
Even events in places like Denver and Salt Lake City have been notable for the rate at which fighters gas out—add an extra 2,000 feet of elevation on that and it wasn’t pretty. Hell, Mexico City is only 600 feet closer to sea level than Machu Picchu. It’s a massive metropolis; I get that the promotion doesn’t want to write it off—hell they’re even building a new performance institute there—but surely there has to be better options.
Can UFC find other options?
Guadalajara may still be at a mile, but Monterray’s elevation is only 1,700 feet, and the UFC went there back in 2015. I’m only spitballing, but there’s gotta be something they can do to get cards out of the literal stratosphere and back down on solid ground. It seems absurd to think that the UFC is going to make a base of operations in a city where they can’t even book 1/3 of the roster without risking a heart attack.
They’ve got the fans, they’ve got the talent, even a healthy portion of their American-born fighters identify strongly with their Mexican roots. It’s clearly a market that the world’s largest MMA promotion needs to pour themselves into. But fight cards where bantamweights look like they’re sucking wind just six minutes into the bout are no bueno.
Maybe a future will come along where a sizeable portion of fighters train out of Mexico City year around, I think that’s honestly what it would take to make this altitude reasonable. But as veteran sports broadcaster Rodrigo Del Campo González recently noted speaking of this card on social media, even the Mexican fighters here weren’t routinely using the city as a home base. Will that change with the construction of a UFC complex? Or will it just remain a place that the UFC only visits once every few years, when they feel they really have to? Either way I can’t help but think fans deserve something better.
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