Just a couple of days after Conor McGregor said his trilogy bout with Dustin Poirier was off, UFC President Dana White announced the fight is on as planned.
Poirier and McGregor will square off for a third time inside the Octagon at UFC 264.
What’s more, the contest will take place in Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena in front of a full capacity crowd.
“I am so happy to finally be able to say Vegas is back,” White said in the video that broke the news. “This summer, Las Vegas is back open for business and on July 10, UFC 264 will be at the T-Mobile Arena here in Vegas at 100 percent capacity. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s 20,000 fans.”
Tickets will go sale this week and this news happens to coincide with a series of social media skirmishes between the two lightweights this week.
McGregor and Poirier traded a series of personal barbs over Twitter and any notions of a cordial build-up to this fight like in their January rematch fight seems to be unlikely.
In their first bout, McGregor scored a first-round knockout victory to propel himself into the UFC featherweight title picture at UFC 178 back in 2014.
Poirier avenged that defeat earlier this year with a knockout of his own, finishing the fight in the second round at UFC 257 on “Fight Island” levelling the score between these two lightweights.
At the time of writing, this is the only bout that has been announced for UFC 264 in July.
The event is the third that is confirmed to take place with fans without capacity restrictions.
UFC 261, which is set to feature a welterweight championship bout between Kamaru Usman and Jorge Masvidal, is due to take place in front of a full house in the Vyastar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville later this month.
In May, UFC 262 is set to feature Michael Chandler and Charles Oliveira’s battle for the vacant UFC lightweight title at Houston’s Toyota Center with a capacity crowd. It’s expected that the winner of that bout will then face the victor of McGregor and Poirier’s third contest.