Minus lab coat, Dana White delivers UFC to Fight Island

So this happened: When he was thinking of ways to combat COVID-19 and return his sport to holding competitive events, Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White floated the idea of building a lab.

A real one. Where coronavirus tests could be administered.

Where there would have been tubes and beakers and vials and scales. Where the UFC boss would spend his days in a white coat swabbing throats and peering through a microscope.

Or maybe that’s just how I imagine it would be …

“I laid out all these options that the team started working on,” White said. “Can we build a lab? Can we get this? Can we get that?

“Obviously, we figured out a cheaper way. That’s how mental I am. That’s what I was thinking about doing.”

It’s not as if all eccentric ideas fall short.

I mean, Fight Island is here.

Yas it is

The place White needed most while a global pandemic kept international fighters from traveling to the United States is an island in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Yas Island. All 9.653 square miles of water parks and golf courses and beaches lined with mangroves.

There is also a 3.4-mile Formula 1 race track that hosts an annual Grand Prix. The cars have been said to keep folks awake at night. Loud engines and stuff.

But for the next three weeks, beginning with UFC 251 on Saturday, the island will host four such events and further support White’s contention that not only would his sport return first from the coronavirus pause, but do so in a safe and healthy manner.

White is Notre Dame and the Dallas Cowboys and the Yankees. There is no middle ground to opinions most hold of him. Few take his side when fighters complain about being underpaid and receiving subpar health benefits. He has never seemed overly worried about it. Or, more pointedly, at all.

But even White’s harshest critics might find it difficult to denounce those protocols the UFC has continued to strengthen while hosting eight events in the United States since returning May 9.

The COVID-19 tests — which reportedly included more than 2,500 for Las Vegas cards — produced 11 positive results. That’s 0.4 percent. Guys in lab coats live for those numbers.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen week-to-week,” White said. “Obviously, you don’t have to be a genius right now to look at this thing and realize numbers are ramping up again.

“I always expect the worst, but there is no better group that works on the fly than we do, man. In good times and bad times, we figure stuff out. There is always a solution to these problems. That has always been my mentality.”

Here’s such a plan for Fight Island: Test anyone who appears the slightest bit alive. Test those darn sea turtles if they look feverish. We’re talking nearly 3,500 swabs over the four events. The UFC is also promoting its safety zone — a four- square mile area for hotels and training and dining, and an arena, all without the general public — as the tightest bubble in sports.

White not deterred

It was correct, and even responsible, to question White’s intentions when pushing so aggressively for his sport to come back. At the time, far too much uncertainty surrounded COVID-19 and its ability to produce the sort of alarming numbers we see now.

None of it deterred him, and results produced by the UFC so far should earn White at least a few I-told-you-so smirks. But things can change faster than the course of a tropical storm, which is why White has already begun forming a plan should his sport be shut down a second time.

For now, though, here is the Fight Island he promised. Out in the Persian Gulf, where Formula 1 cars roar into the night and the first SeaWorld without killer whales will open in 2022.

White said it would happen and it did, with a small number of positive tests along the way.

“The day this COVID stuff started, I had a big (staff) meeting and said, ‘I’m going to be honest with you guys — I don’t understand this. I don’t know a lot about it. Nobody does. If you don’t feel safe or feel uncomfortable, you can go home right now and work from home.’

“Nobody went home. Everybody stayed. I have guys who I have done business with for a long time in Los Angeles and other places who told their staff they could go home and people were asking, ‘Like now? Can we leave right now?’ Everybody walked out of their company. Nobody did that here. These people are awesome. I knew that. I knew my team is solid. I knew the fighters would fight.”

He didn’t even need to build a lab.

But the mere idea of it is magnificent.

Ed Graney is a Sigma Delta Chi Award winner for sports column writing and can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard on “The Press Box,” ESPN Radio 100.9 FM and 1100 AM, from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday. Follow @edgraney on Twitter.