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  • Melrose & UFC: More Than Just A Fight Night

We know that not everyone is a UFC enthusiast, but being the host city for the next Pay-Per-View event is still super exciting for our community regardless! Melrose Café and Bar on 17th Ave hosts several community-focused events, such as Third Tuesday and Social Media Breakfast, but there’s another event that we’re passionate about, and that is UFC. It’s no secret that Melrose is proud to host the fights every month; from our décor to our marketing, a strong emphasis is always placed on UFC. The biggest catalyst behind this is none other than the owner himself, Mr. Wayne Leong. I recently sat down with the Melrose Owner and long-time UFC fan to chat about the sport and how Melrose has been involved with it over the years.

How long have you been a UFC fan and what is it that you love about the sport?

I’ve been a fan over a decade now. Melrose was actually the first bar in Calgary to show the fights back in 2001, and it’s grown immensely since then. I like the sport because of the purity of it. The athletes train very hard. They don’t do it for the money; they do it because they are passionate about it.

What kinds of things has Melrose done in the past in conjunction with the sport?

For one, we’ve shown every Pay-Per-View, and recently it became legal to show the fights for free in Alberta so we removed the cover charge which was good news for a lot of fans. We’ve also sponsored a few MMA fighters over the years, such as Jason Day, Mike Pyle, and Matt Bagshaw (who recently won Gold at Gracie Worlds 2012). Melrose also has a partnership with Canuckles MMA, a local business owned by one of our servers and her husband – they donate draw prizes for our guests to win during the fights. We’ve had some other partnerships, such as Harley Davidson, Karv Clothing, and Labatt, and we’ve been able to give away a lot of prizes donated by those groups as well. For example, last year we gave away a trip to Vancouver to watch the fights there and that was through a draw we did in-house during a Pay-Per-View event.

How is Melrose showing support for the upcoming UFC in Calgary?

We are sponsoring Canadian Fighter Chris Clements, who will be fighting Mathew Riddle in a Pay-Per-View Card in UFC 149, so we are very excited about that. We will definitely be showing the fights this Saturday at both locations, 17th Ave and the one we just opened inside the Cowboys Casino. Also, on Friday we have 100 UFC fight club members joining us for a private party and our partner Cowboys will be throwing the the Official Pre-Party as well, so we are all looking forward to celebrating the fights finally coming to Calgary.

We would like to invite everyone (everyone without tickets that is) down to one of our Melrose locations on July 21st, 2012 to watch some UFC action and celebrate it being aired live from our hometown for the first time ever!

-Hayley @h_gislason

Hayley Gislason

Assistant Marketing Manager

Melrose Café and Bar