UFC plays second fiddle to Stanley Cup

This artical was written by By Kevin Iole, Yahoo! Sports

Fast forward a year and White is back in Vancouver, promoting UFC 131 on Saturday at Rogers Arena, with a lot more respect for hockey, particularly Canadians’ passion for the sport. Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final at Rogers Arena between the Boston Bruins and the hometown Vancouver Canucks is Friday night and the UFC was not the big story in town, as it was a year earlier.

A Boston-area native, the usually outspoken White was asked at the UFC 131 prefight news conference whether he was rooting for the Bruins. White demurred and didn’t answer, a rarity for him.

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Later, as he was pressed about the wisdom of scheduling an MMA event in Canada during the week of the Stanley Cup Final, White finally gave some ground.

“The thing about coming up to Canada is, people love their hockey up here,” White said. “It’s the only thing everybody cares about. It’s part of this culture. They’ve treated us so well up here and I feel we’re the No. 2 sport [in Canada] behind hockey. When they have their championship going on, I absolutely respect that 100 percent.”

The fact that the Canucks are playing for the Stanley Cup has taken some of the attention away from the UFC card and pushed the coverage of the show into the back pages of the local papers. The fight card is still not a sellout, but both White and Tom Wright, the UFC’s head of the Canadian office, are unconcerned. Wright said the Rogers Arena will be configured on Saturday to seat between 14,000-15,000 and he said he expects ticket sales to hit between 13,000-14,000.

White said the Canucks deserved the attention they were receiving and said he didn’t expect it to hurt the UFC card at all. He’s frequently praised the Canadian market as one of his best and said that Canadians are supporting the UFC show despite the presence of the Stanley Cup Final in the city.

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