World Series of Fighting has made some changes to its year-end schedule. Instead of three events stretching from November to New Year’s Eve, they will be focusing exclusively on their New Year’s Eve card in New York City, at the Madison Square Garden Theater.
WSOF 34 was slated for November 12th in Colorado, while WSOF 35 was set to happen on December 3rd in Everett, Washington. Those events have been scrapped, and the WSOF 34 main event of Jon Fitch vs. Jake Shields is now one of three title fights on tap for WSOF: NYC. Lightweight champ Justin Gaethje will defend his belt against Joao Zeferino, while bantamweight champion Marlon Moraes will face an opponent TBD.
Sports Illustrated’s Mike Dyce has additional details through an interview with WSOF CEO Carlos Silva.
“We wanted to bring our biggest and baddest fighters and our champions to [Madison Square Garden],” Silva said. “We’re going to bring the headliners from those [cancelled cards] to make the event even bigger and more spectacular.
“We absolutely love this New Year’s Eve show, and the exciting thing is that we’re also on NBC,” Silva said, noting earlier fights in the card will air on NBC Sports Network. “It’s a real blockbuster card with respect to the undercard and then the main card on NBC. We absolutely would love to make this [an] annual event.”
As for any concerns about multiple events being cancelled, Silva has an optimistic look for WSOF’s future.
“I think we’ve shown in the last year, if you look at what’s on social, you see a lot of positives about the great fights that Ray [Sefo] and the team put on,” Silva said. “I think we’re in a different place than we were a couple of years ago. There is no reason fans should be worried at all.”
WSOF: NYC will be the promotion’s first event based in the state of New York since professional MMA was made legal earlier in the year. One of the canceled events, WSOF 34, was due to go directly opposite of UFC 205: Alvarez vs. McGregor, but it’s a date, WSOF president Ray Sefo said on The MMA Hour, that they’d reserved for more than a year. Now it’ll all be about a big event with their own title fight tripleheader on December 31st.