Update On UFC Involvement At WWE NXT Battleground

Many WWE fans were left scratching their heads when the announcement was made that NXT Battleground, an event that was originally scheduled to take place over Memorial Day weekend in Savannah, Georgia, would take place at the UFC Apex facility in Las Vegas, Nevada on June 9. Opened in 2019, the UFC Apex was originally designed to host UFC fight cards and studio shows, but after the COVID-19 pandemic forced shows to take place behind closed doors, the venue became the UFC's homebase akin to what the Thunderdome and Daily's Place were for WWE and AEW respectively, and has held almost 100 hundred fight cards since 2020.

Due to the fact that it is a UFC venue, there is going to be a small matter of removing the UFC Octagon and replacing it with a WWE ring. However, according to Fightful Select, there were pitches from people within WWE to put the Octagon to use during the NXT Battleground card, but due to logistical issues raised by those on the production team, those ideas were scrapped and a standard wrestling ring will be used for the event. This includes the NXT Underground match between Shayna Baszler and Lola Vice despite not only has a bare-knuckle/MMA style presentation, but also the fact that Baszler herself actually competed in the UFC before her time in WWE.

Fightful Select were also told by those in NXT that there will be a heavy UFC presence this Sunday. It's unclear at the time of writing as to what sort of presence it will be, but this news comes less than a week after UFC President Dana White stated that the worlds of UFC and WWE have been very separate despite the merger of the two companies by parent company Endeavor to form TKO Group Holdings in 2023.