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Super-sized show in the works for UFC 129

When the UFC brings a major pay-per-view event to a city, the company's goal is to create a local atmosphere equivalent to a big-time sporting event.

But for its next show, UFC 129 on April 30 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, the home of Major League Baseball's Toronto Blue Jays, the goal has been ratcheted up several notches.

"The goal is the week of the show to take over the city," said Tom Wright, UFC's head of Canadian operations, who noted there will be no other major sporting events in town that week and he expects the event to be the talk of the city.

Activities are highlighted by what will be, in terms of attendance and live gate, by far the biggest event in the mixed martial arts history outside of Japan. Approximately 55,000 fans will be in attendance paying roughly $11 million (U.S.) to see a show headlined by Georges St. Pierre defending his UFC welterweight championship against Jake Shields, the former Elite XC welterweight and Strikeforce middleweight champion, who has won 15 straight fights dating back to 2004. The show sold out almost immediately when tickets were put on sale.

From a ticket-revenue perspective, it will be the largest event in the 22-year history of the Rogers Centre, in a building that has housed the World Series, Buffalo Bills NFL games, the 1991 MLB All-Star game, two WrestleManias, international soccer matches, the Grey Cup, and concerts featuring U2, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen.

"We spent the better part of 2½ months planning before tickets were put on sale," said Wright, the former CFL commissioner.

In addition, the company is producing a two-day Fan Expo on April 29 and 30 at the Direct Energy Center, which is not yet sold out, but advance sales are ahead of any Fan Expo the company has done to date. Close to 40 fighters who are not on the show itself are being brought in by UFC to be part of the festivities, and likely a number of others will be brought in by vendors at the expo.

That event will include Q&A sessions with UFC president Dana White, Wright, Chuck Liddell, announcer Joe Rogan and ring announcer Bruce Buffer. There will also be a referee seminar with Herb Dean and a grappling tournament that will include UFC star Diego Sanchez.

The weigh-ins will be held in conjunction with the expo, at the Ricoh Coliseum, about 50 yards from the expo.

UFC 129's success is due to a number of factors, the biggest being pent-up demand from fans in the province of Ontario. The province has been a longtime pay-per-view hotbed for the company even though until this year, it was illegal to actually have live MMA shows. In Toronto, on the nights of big UFC events, the city's major sports bars are usually packed early in the night with lines out the doors.

The Ontario Athletic Commission held fast to a Canadian national law passed in the 1800s regarding what type of fighting sports are legal, long before anything along the lines of mixed martial arts even existed. But UFC's ability to produce revenue – the company estimates $40 million in economic impact on the city of Toronto during the week – led to a governmental about-face late last year.

Toronto is also the fourth largest metropolitan area in North America, with a population of 9 million, and is located about a 90-minute drive from Buffalo, N.Y., and about 3½ hours from Detroit.

St. Pierre, a Canadian national sports hero, as the headliner was the cherry on top. St. Pierre has been voted in fan polls as the Canadian athlete of the year by Rogers SportsNet, one of the country's leading sports channels, for the past three years.

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Because the Canadian mainstream media has been much quicker to accept MMA as a sport than their American counterparts, this will be, by far, the most covered event in the sport's history. There have been between 750-800 requests for media credentials, more than double the number for the Dec. 11 show in Montreal when St. Pierre defended his title against Josh Koscheck. This covers virtually every major media outlet in the country.

Wright estimates St. Pierre's media request has at least tripled as compared with a normal championship defense in Canada.

While Wright said the lion's share of fans are coming from Ontario based on details of ticket purchases, there will be people coming from all 10 provinces in Canada as well as all three territories, along with 48 of the 50 U.S. states, and a number of foreign countries.

He noted this will be a unique event in the history of the sport in its first major stadium show in UFC history.

The company's goal is to replicate the live-event experience in the massive dome that fans usually get in an arena. This has required, besides the months of planning, a week's worth of set-up time.

The building will be set up differently than any time in its history. For the first time, the field will become its own 12,000-seat arena, with tiered seating instead of flat, field-level seating.

"It'll be like the Mandalay Bay Events Center [the Las Vegas building that is one of UFC's usual home bases for major shows] just on the field," said Wright.

"We want to replicate the same experience on the floor as you would get at an arena since those are the fans who are paying the most money for tickets," said Wright.

There will be approximately 300 different rigging points from the ceiling of the building, noted Silvio D'Addario, the vice president of events for Rogers Centre. They will be for everything from lighting the octagon and the crowd itself, to more speakers than most rock concerts, 13 different big screens, with four of them 55 x 30 feet, about 2½-3 as large as you would get at a usual arena. That's in addition to the center-field Jumbotron used for baseball and football.

There will be 80 rigging points just for speakers. For comparison, a recent AC/DC concert in the venue had 40 such rigging points.

[Related: Randy Couture says he'll retire after UFC 129]

Even things you wouldn't normally think of, like food, is a story to itself.

"Our food service provider, Aramark, is bringing in 24 to 35 regional managers and executive chefs from different arenas," noted D'Addario.

While the city is clearly getting amped for the show, one Toronto native is working on not getting too excited right now.

Mark Bocek, 29, a jiu-jitsu expert who studied under the legendary Rickson Gracie, faces former World Extreme Cagefighting lightweight champion Ben Henderson on the live pay-per-view portion of the show.

"I can't let the promotion get to me," said Bocek, who has left the city for his normal routine of training with the American Top Team in South Florida for the past month. "If I do, I'm not going to perform. I have to treat it like it's just another fight."

He thinks it's been good to be out of Toronto so he hasn't been in the middle of the hype.

"I expected it to be big," he said. "I was at UFC 124 [the show on Dec. 11 in Montreal which drew what was the all-time company attendance record announced at 23,152] and most of the fans there were Ontarians. They're just hardcore fans.

"I think Japanese fans are the most educated, and Ontarians are right behind them. I don't really know why."

And putting together a show the scope of UFC 129 has been an education for the company.

"Doing a show like this will be a lot easier the second time," said Wright.

More UFC 129 coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
Watch UFC 129 from your own room at Rogers Centre
Georges St. Pierre visualizes Toronto celebration