The long-awaited Cage Warriors return to Ireland will happen in 2017, with the company's president saying that he is eyeing up a March date.
Not so long ago, before he joined the UFC and became one of the biggest names in world sport, Conor McGregor was beaten by Joseph Duffy in a bout at Neptune Stadium in Cork as part of the 'Cage Warriors' franchise.
On the card that day in November 2010 was McGregor's 'SBG' team-mate Artem Lobov, who recently enthralled a big crowd at the SSE Arena in Belfast by defeating Teruto Ishihara at UFC Fight Night 99. Cathal Pendred and Aisling Daly were two well-known Irish fighters also fighting in Cork.
McGregor would go on to win both the featherweight and lightweight belts in the 'Cage Warriors' series, creating the famous image that would become his Twitter profile photo and which would inspire him to try and achieve the same in UFC (which he did).
And now Cage Warriors is set to return to Ireland for the first time in three years.
Paul Dollery of the42.ie was speaking to Graham Boylan, the president of Cage Warriors, and Boylan told him that the company plans to stage an event at an unconfirmed venue at some point in 2017, "hopefully in March". Boylan said:
This is an Irish-owned company with a number of Irish investors and we want to open the massive platform we have on live TV and UFC Fight Pass up to the young Irish athletes coming through.
Boylan said that the company was "planning big" and would announce further details "shortly".
The athletes put in all the hard work and they deserve all the credit. The one thing we can do for them is turn the lights on and bring the cameras of the world to their doorstep.
With more big events planned, the MMA craze currently engulfing the country looks set to continue and grow. Cage Warriors will return to Ireland with the sport's audience size markedly different from how it was back in those heady days six years ago.
