The @UFC makes
history in Singapore this June with the launch of ‘Road To UFC’Read more about the ground-breaking “win and advance” tournament
here:— UFC News (@UFCNews)
April 22, 2022
The Ultimate Fighting Championship is finally
bringing back the tournament format for an event series other than
“The Ultimate Fighter.”
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Back in the beginning of April, reporter John Hyon
Ko broke the news that the UFC was putting on a series of
eight-man tournaments spread across four divisions in June. The
UFC then announced on Thursday night its plan of this series,
titled “Road to UFC.” The two events on the books will be held on
June 9 and June 10 during the fight week of
UFC 275 that goes down June 11. All three of these fight cards
will go on at the Singapore Indoor Stadium in Kallang,
Singapore.
The four divisions include flyweight, bantamweight, featherweight
and lightweight, while the competitors hail all across Asia from
Japan and Korea to Indonesia and China. Each fight card will
feature exactly four tournament bouts, and it will include one
non-tourney match for other fighters in the region that hope to
earn a spot on the roster in a similar vein to Dana White’s Contender Series. Semifinals and
finals will be held later on in 2022, and the winners of each
weight category will earn a UFC contract.
This specific tournament series is not the first of its kind, as
the promotion staged “Road to UFC: Japan” back in 2015 to crown a
contender at the featherweight division. A reality series similar
to TUF, the quarterfinals and semifinals were prerecorded
exhibition bouts, while the final was set as a live battle at UFC
Fight Night 75. That tournament did not provide a satisfying
conclusion, as Mizuto
Hirota fought Teruto
Ishihara to a draw; even with the provisions that a “sudden
victory” fourth round take place to crown a victor, the UFC
neglected to implement it and the draw stood. Instead, the UFC
awarded both fighters contracts – Hirota went 1-3 after the draw
and was released in 2018, while Ishihara concluded his run after
three wins opposite five defeats in 2019.