Without the king of UFC pay-per-view, UFC 131 won’t reach 500k buys.
Even though he is no longer the UFC heavyweight champion, Brock Lesnar is the undisputed pound-for-pound champion when it comes to selling pay-per-views.
So far in his career, Lesnar has headlined three major events—UFC 100 and UFC 116, and UFC 121.
UFC 100 did over 1.6 million buys, UFC 116 did nearly 1.1 million buys, and UFC 121 drew in around 1.2 million buys.
The only other event to come close to that mark was UFC 114, which did somewhere between 950k and 1 million buys.
Now instead of Lesnar vs Junior dos Santos headlining, you have Shane Carwin vs dos Santos trying to bear the weight of UFC 131 on their shoulders.
For this pay-per-view to sell, it will really need some help from its supporting cast. To be frank, it just isn’t there.
You have a few named fighters there like Kenny Florian, Demian Maia, and Mark Munoz on the pay-per-view portion of the card, but will that be enough to help this event out?
No way.
While there are some that are arguing that Carwin vs dos Santos is a better match, it sure isn’t in the eyes of Dana White and the rest of Zuffa.
For nearly two months now, The Ultimate Fighter reality show has been getting whoever is watching it pumped up for Lesnar vs dos Santos. Now they have to settle for Carwin vs dos Santos.
With a let-down of a main event, combined with a relatively weak undercard, UFC 131 will be lucky to do half the buys it would have had Brock Lesnar still been headlining the card.
Do not be surprised at all if you see numbers for this event just slightly north of what UFC 130 does at the end of this month.