Marshall Zelaznik confirms “congestion” problems for UK events, still thinks three or four dates are possible

UK UFC President, Marshall Zelaznik has confirmed the UFC will not be visiting Braehead, Scotland this year as part of their “major invasion” of the British Isles in 2011, before once again beginning the spin campaign about how we’re set to see them touch down three-four times before we reach the turn of the year.
Speaking via ESPN.co.uk, Zelaznik said:

“Scotland is a priority for us, but the problem is that the venue causes problems if we’re talking about a three or four-event plan for 2011. If we were having six Fight Nights in the UK, Scotland would make all the sense in the world.”

“But if we’re in the situation where we’re running three of four events that are more in line with how we’ve done past events, the more likely arenas are Liverpool and Manchester. Liverpool we haven’t been to and it’s a newer arena than Manchester, but both are bigger in size than the Braehead in Scotland, which seats about 5,200 people.”

“If we can pull off the fight that we have in mind for our next UK event, we will definitely sell out Liverpool or Manchester, that’s a fact.”

Let us not forget that the UFC hosted an event at London’s O2 Arena last time they were in the UK, making Manchester or Liverpool the obvious and unsurprising choice for their next one. When asked about the promotions efforts to bring six events to the UK over the course of 2011, Zelaznik said:

“The first quarter is done and dusted. Nothing’s happening in the first quarter. There’s still a chance in the second quarter that we’ll be able to bring an event to the UK. We haven’t yet got all the pieces together on this plan for four-to-six Fight Nights in a year, but we’re still working on it. If we’re successful we could still see three or four events take place in the UK this year, but right now six looks unlikely for 2011.”

“It’s still a work in progress, the difficulty is finding the right dates that mix with our US TV partners, because we still need US TV to make these events run. So if we haven’t done a date in the UK during the first quarter, it is purely due to the fact that the dates didn’t work.”

MMABay broke the story last week that the promotion had decided against an event in Scotland during the second quarter of 2011 and would like to go on record as predicting the UFC will return to the UK this year… wait for it… for their regular annual event in the final quarter of 2011. There will certainly be no three-four events as “promised” by the head of UK operations, that much is for sure…