Washington — UFC Chief Content Officer and Executive Producer Craig Borsari is the man in charge of the UFC’s production, and he’s had a “wildly challenging” but “also fun” time ahead of UFC Freedom 250 this Sunday.
“When you’re in this industry, these are the challenges you look for to try to tackle, with a team that we’ve built over 21 years, at least 21 years that I’ve been here,” Bosari said ahead of the event this week, speaking with media outlets including Cageside Press.
“It has literally been a year of daily, if not multiple times a day, of meetings, conference calls, logistics with the White House. It’s been a heavy, heavy lift but in a lot of ways, it’s really rewarding and fun.”
The finished product at the White House, said Bosari, is “remarkably close” to what was planned originally. Multiple visits to the White House saw the production crew take laser measurements of the White House South Lawn, and there were concerns about the space being too small. “Those trips paid off, because as many of you will see, the structure fits perfectly, within a quarter inch, of what we had planned. And it allows us to maximize capacity and do a lot of the production elements and enhancements that we’re looking for. So it’s very, very close.”
Weather has been the big talk of the event. “We are now at a period of time where weather can get fairly predictable. When you’re seven to ten days out, you get a general sense of what’s ahead of you,” noted Bosari. “Now for, starting with Friday, we have a pretty good idea of what we might be facing. I’m not checking weather apps, I’m getting reports from our meteorologist who’s on site. Now he’s at a point where he’s giving us hourly updates of what the weather looks like.”
There’s a custom cover for the octagon canvas, “so that’s going to protect us from any increased heat,” revealed Bosari. The 8PM ET start time for the event was chosen in part to keep sunlight off the surface as well. “When you’re out in the sun, particularly this time of year, it gets hot very quickly. So we’ll keep it covered, we’ll keep it cool.”
The UFC’s Noche UFC/UFC 306 card at The Sphere in Las Vegas wound up winning an Emmy (two in fact), and there’s talk that UFC Freedom 250 could be in the running again. “Knowing the effort that everybody put in to get to where we are today and hopefully a successful show on Sunday, it is nice to be acknowledged, but we don’t set out to win awards,” Bosari told Cageside Press. “We try to create a broadcast that we’re proud of, and that we hope our fans are going to be proud of.”
Borsari also addressed the political aspect of UFC Freedom 250 when asked if the promotion would have accepted an invitation to host an event by a Democrat president, rather than Republican Donald Trump. “One hundred percent.”
Watch the full UFC Freedom 250 media day appearance by Craig Bosari above.
