Here’s hoping there’s no last-minute hitches this time around.
UFC President Dana White today confirmed that Conor McGregor will finally take on Jose Aldo for the UFC Featherweight title at UFC 194 in Las Vegas on December 12.
McGregor, of course, was supposed to take on Aldo at the MGM Grand last month, until Aldo’s late withdrawal meant that he had to defeat Chad Mendes for the Interim Featherweight title instead.
If the Irish attendance at that fight is anything to go by, then there are going to be a hell of a lot of McGregor fans thinking about making the trip to the States again before Christmas.
Sure, some of them will be there for the party as much as the fight itself but hey, we’re not here to judge.
What we are here to do is to give you an idea of how you might go about getting ahead of everyone else in an effort to plan out to trip so after a little bit of browsing, here’s what we came up with.
Flights
While we expect this to change pretty quickly, a search this afternoon – the day the fight was announced – reveals that you can get return flights to Las Vegas from Dublin for approximately €530.
If you’re going to make the trip you might as well give yourself a few days to enjoy everything that Vegas has to offer and we like the look of an option that involves leaving Dublin on the Wednesday afternoon before the fight and coming back the Wednesday afterwards with Delta for €530.44.
A roof over your head
If you’re going to travel that far, you might as well travel in style and doing so may not be as expensive as you might think.
In our search earlier today, for example, we found a West Wing King room available in the MGM Grand itself for a mere €135 for the night of the fight.
Chances are deals like that won’t hang around for long, however, but such is the multitude of options available in Sin City that, at the time of writing, you can bag yourself a room in the Stratosphere Hotel and the Luxor Hotel (both on the Strip) for €61 and €90 respectively.
If you really want to go all out (when in Vegas after all), you can book yourself a room in the Venetian for a cool €263 on the Saturday night.
The fight itself
Considering the fight was only announced today, tickets won’t officially go on sale for some time yet.
If we rewind back to the proposed original meeting between Aldo and McGregor, however, tickets were priced between $128.00 and $1,003.00 (approximately €115-906) so we can expect something similar this time around.
It is worth bearing in mind that this will be one of the biggest events in the history of the UFC so if you miss out on an official ticket and are looking to blag one off the touts, if you re-mortgage your gaff you might come close to covering it.
All in all then, excluding tickets, we reckon you can get to Vegas and spend the night of the fight in a hotel for around €650-700, which you should be able to cover if you’re prepared to completely sacrifice your Christmas a couple of weeks later.
We also feel the need to point out that the figure does not include everything else you get up to in Las Vegas, which, if the Hangover movies are to be believed, could involve waking up to a tiger in your room and getting punched in the face by Mike Tyson.
You could, of course, fund your entire trip by placing a wager or two in one of the many welcoming and friendly casinos in the City of Sin; we recommend placing your entire holiday budget on red*.
*JOE does not in any way condone gambling in any way, shape or form.
