(No, you can’t do that… you can’t triple jab a double jab, you can’t triple jab a double jab! Ace!)
Perhaps this news shouldn’t be all that shocking, considering that MMA is as popular in Brazil as, well, pornography is in Brazil. In either case, you might be surprised to learn that the incredibly weak lineup of UFC 147, which faced enough injury withdrawals to give Joe Silva a heart attack twice over, drew in over 20 million viewers, as reported by Tatame.com. That’s only three million less than UFC 142 brought in back in January, which featured Jose Aldo’s destruction of Chad Mendes, Edson Barboza’s destruction of Terry Etim, and Anthony Johnson’s destruction of a nearby Chima Steakhouse.
Perhaps even more surprising than the amount of viewers who caught UFC 147 from home were those who actually attended the event live. If you recall, the UFC was giving out full refunds for the event to those who had purchased tickets prior to the aforementioned injury curse (something we later found out was simply in accordance with Brazilian law), which didn’t exactly lead us to believe that the event would draw in an astounding 16,643 fans. Now there’s some dedication that should be applauded.
Although we have yet to hear back on the PPV numbers from the event (which will likely be much, much lower than any in recent memory), it is great to hear, at least for the UFC, that an event as lackluster on paper as UFC 147 was can still reel in numbers as significant as those. But could you imagine how great UFC 147 would have been given the original lineup? It would be like if David Hasselhoff and Rammstein played a joint concert at a bratwurst and beer festival in Hamburg on Pfingstmontag, for Christ’s sake. This is just one of the many reasons we need to eliminate the UN, Potato Nation.