With China emerging as a major market for professional mixed martial arts, the UFC will continue to expand in the region with the launch of an Asian installment of Dana White's Tuesday Night Contender Series.
Launching in 2020, the new show will air on Wednesday nights with fights taking place at the UFC's new Performance Institute in Shanghai,
which opened in June. The new training and development facility — which is nearly three times as large as the original UFC Performance Institute in Las Vegas — serves as a training hub to develop and support the next generation of MMA athletes from mainland China and the greater Asia-Pacific region. It's the perfect location for Dana White's Contender Series, a series that is focused on finding upcoming talent that UFC president Dana White can sign to compete in the promotion.
"One of my favorite parts of my job is looking for up-and-coming talent," White said in a statement.
"There's no area in the world right now with more potential MMA talent than Asia. We're going to use Dana White's Contender Series to find these fighters, develop them and give them the opportunity to perform on the biggest stage in combat sports."
In august, female strawweight Zhang Weili became the UFC's first ever Chinese champion,
knocking out Jessica Andrade in just 42 seconds.