Conor McGregor fans have been provided another opportunity to see the UFC star in action on Sunday, with a fresh batch of tickets released for UFC 257. A limited number of tickets were made available on Wednesday night, after a huge demand for the Fight Island Triple Header finale at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi. Tickets originally went on sale on January 8. Making his UFC debut, McGregor takes on Dustin Poirier in the headline bout, in a rematch of their 2014 encounter. It represents his first competitive fight in more than a year. The series opener last Saturday, UFC Fight Night: Holloway vs Kattar, welcomed fans to a live UFC event for the first time since March, with attendance capped at 2,000. Etihad Arena boasts an 18,000 capacity. Dana White, the promotion's president who had been skeptical about staging shows below venue capacity, told <em>The National </em>on Tuesday: "I was obviously very negative going in. But it sounded unbelievable, the fans were awesome. They were going out of their minds. “Every time something cool happened during a fight, it could be a transition on the ground or whatever, the fans were super-educated and responded to everything. “I had a blast. They’re opening it up to even more for the Conor fight, so it should be rocking in there.” Asked why he was initially reluctant to do anything but a capacity event, White said: “My thing is I don’t want to go into a 20,000-seat arena and bring in 3,000 people. It doesn’t have the same type of energy level, and I don’t need to. “What I’d rather do is when the day comes, when the time is ready, we’ll go in and be the first to sell out an arena and do a real event. But I’m not going to tell you that I hated Saturday night and the fans that were in there. They were awesome. It was very cool.” Tickets for UFC 257 are available at ticketmaster.ae and etihadarena.ae.
