Maracanãzinho is the traditional venue for volleyball and basketball in Brazil. Photo: CBV/Disclosure
As happened last year, 2014 will have only one edition of the UFC aired on pay-per-view in the United States. The honor will again be granted to Rio de Janeiro, which will host UFC 179, or UFC Rio 5, scheduled for October 25th. What's new this time is that unlike the four previous visits, hosted at the HSBC Arena, the organization chose the Ginásio do Maracanãzinho as the stage for the fight night.
With a capacity for around 12 thousand people, Maracanãzinho was opened in 1954 and has a vast history with “Vale-tudo”, the precursor of MMA, as it hosted several events in which athletes from different martial arts challenged each other over the years. 80 and 90.
There are no fights announced yet for the event, but expectations for the fights are high. As this is a PPV event, the card must feature a list of internationally renowned athletes – to boost sales in the USA. Furthermore, the UFC has scheduled champions to defend their titles systematically on all numbered cards, which increases the chances of the Brazilian public seeing on the spot a title fight.
Until today, curiously, UFC Rio has always had Anderson Silva ou José Aldo as the star of the card. Spider defended his middleweight belt against Yushin Okami in the first edition and had a light heavyweight fight against Stephan bonnar in the third. Aldo defended his featherweight title against Chad Mendes at UFC Rio 2 and the “Korean zombie” Jung Chan Sung at UFC Rio 4. This time, however, it is difficult for one of the two to be present, as Anderson is recovering from a broken leg and plans to return only in 2015 and Aldo has a fight scheduled for the 2nd of August.
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