Events
It has hosted many WWE events such as Raw, SmackDown, and Unforgiven 2005. A record-setting Raw was held in the arena on June 30, 2008 with 11,560 fans on hand. This was the most WWE tickets sold in Oklahoma in WWE history. Raw came to the Chesapeake Energy Arena on September 25, 2006 and March 1, 2010 with Cheech & Chong appearing as the evening's guest hosts. During the show on September 25, 2006, the opening of the show suffered a blackout, but lights were restored shortly after the night began. The March 1 show was the first-ever WWE sell out of the Chesapeake Energy Arena with 14,708 fans on hand. Also on October 1, 2010, WWE came back to the Chesapeake Energy Arena to do the first live SmackDown on Syfy. WWE returned in March 2011 to do a Raw house show. WWE came back to do a live Raw SuperShow on October 10, 2011. WWE returned for a Raw SuperShow on February 6, 2012. WWE returned for a Raw Supershow on October 1, 2012 to celebrate Jim Ross Appreciation Night. WWE will return on February 26, 2013 for WWE Smackdown.
The PBR has held an event at the Chesapeake Energy Arena annually since 2002. Its premier bull riding tour, the Built Ford Tough Series (known as the Bud Light Cup until 2002), has occupied the Chesapeake Energy Arena from 2002–2006 and again in 2009 and each year since. In 2007 and 2008, the PBR held their Challenger Tour finals here. Prior to 2002, the PBR's BFTS tour event was held at the Oklahoma State Fair Arena.
It hosted the 2007 Big 12 Men's Basketball Tournament for the first time in 2007 (with the 2007 Big 12 Women's Basketball Tournament held across the street at Cox Convention Center). The venue has hosted the NCAA Men's Basketball First and Second Round on several occasions (including 2010) and is the permanent host of the All-College Basketball Classic. It hosted the 2009 Big 12 Conference Men's Basketball Tournament.
It hosts a number of games and events from Oklahoma City University, the University of Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State University along with those from local high schools and post-secondary organizations. The Chesapeake Energy Arena is also used for other events, including major concert tours, conventions, National Hockey League preseason and exhibition games, and notably professional wrestling shows.
On September 16, 2009, the Ultimate Fighting Championship returned to Oklahoma for the first time since UFC 4, which was at the Expo Square Pavilion in Tulsa on December 16, 1994. A mixed martial arts event will return to the arena on January 12 with the Strikeforce: Champions event.
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Famous quotes containing the word events:
“The geometry of landscape and situation seems to create its own systems of time, the sense of a dynamic element which is cinematising the events of the canvas, translating a posture or ceremony into dynamic terms. The greatest movie of the 20th century is the Mona Lisa, just as the greatest novel is Gray’s Anatomy.”
—J.G. (James Graham)
“By many a legendary tale of violence and wrong, as well as by events which have passed before their eyes, these people have been taught to look upon white men with abhorrence.... I can sympathize with the spirit which prompts the Typee warrior to guard all the passes to his valley with the point of his levelled spear, and, standing upon the beach, with his back turned upon his green home, to hold at bay the intruding European.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The return of the asymmetrical Saturday was one of those small events that were interior, local, almost civic and which, in tranquil lives and closed societies, create a sort of national bond and become the favorite theme of conversation, of jokes and of stories exaggerated with pleasure: it would have been a ready- made seed for a legendary cycle, had any of us leanings toward the epic.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)