UFC President Dana White revealed on the Max & Marcellus show that UFC 196 did 1.5 million PPV buys.
Despite a late replacement in the main event and two memorable upsets in the top two feature fights, UFC 196 appears to have broken all previous pay-per-view records.
According to the promotion’s president Dana White, UFC 196 seemingly earned a 1.5 million PPV buy rate, which puts it ahead of UFC 100 and all over landmark events in the promotion’s history.
“People have been telling me ‘what are you going to do when Chuck Liddell retires?’ then ‘what are you going to do when GSP is gone?’ There is always new great fighters coming down the pipeline,” White told ESPN’s Max & Marcellus. “In this sport, we put the best against the best, or sometimes we do crazy stuff like on Saturday night, where Conor McGregor says ‘I want to fight Nate Diaz. I’ll fight him at 170 [pounds].’
“These are things that capture people’s imaginations. That is why the thing does 1.5 million PPV buys. That is because it captures the imaginations of fight fans.”
UFC 196 featured a welterweight headliner between featherweight champ Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz, as well as a women’s bantamweight title fight between Holly Holm and Miesha Tate.