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UFC to Open Performance Institute in China in 2019

November 19, 2018 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Vicente Luque Curtis Millender UFC on FOX 27 UFC Logo - UFC Shanghai - UFC Fight Night 115 Image Credit: UFC

The UFC is set to open a Performance Institute in China in 2019. MMAjunkie has confirmed with officials that the training center will be based in Shanghai and is about three times the size of the facility in Las Vegas. The new institute will cost $13 million to build and will have a multi-million dollar annual operating budget.

“It’s an exciting day for the UFC and the UFC Performance Institute in that we are expanding our resources globally,” UFC VP of Operations for UFC Performance Institute James Kimball said. “Part of our ambition from day one with the UFC Performance Institute was to expand upon our resources and build a network of facilities globally, the first of which will be located in Shanghai, China. We’re looking to open the facility in Q2 2019. Construction for the facility is currently underway.”

The new facility will offer the same services as the Las Vegas center, but will also focus on developing MMA athletes who are not signed with the UFC.

“I think China – and larger to that point, Asia – is pretty obviously an important destination for international expansion for the UFC, and I think it’s quite evident that we see the vehicle for growth in terms of developing that region for the UFC and talent to be the UFC Performance Institute,” Kimball told the site. “This facility and the ambition here is to develop talent. We will be proactively recruiting talent from mainland China and the surrounding region to develop talent and get them to be UFC-caliber athletes. Unlike Las Vegas, where we do not have MMA-specific skill coaching and we don’t really intervene when it comes to strategy and development of sport-specific skills, in China, we will have a full MMA staff, which we’re currently recruiting. They’ll work in conjunction with the full high-performance team like we have in Las Vegas, but in addition to, we’ll have an MMA team to support them.”

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UFC, Jeremy Thomas