Just like he was when the subject arose earlier this week, Brock Lesnar was quick to respond to UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones’ latest callout. Jones made MMA history by becoming the first fighter to stop decorated former champion Daniel Cormier with an impressive third-round head kick and follow-up strikes (watch full video highlights […]
Jones made MMA history by becoming the first fighter to stop decorated former champion Daniel Cormier with an impressive third-round head kick and follow-up strikes (watch full video highlights here), and he built on that splash comeback win by calling out Lesnar in the moments directly after his return.
After the public callout, Lesnar was once again contacted by The Associated Press, and he issued a warning for ‘Bones’:
“Be careful what you wish for, young man,” Lesnar replied.
It’s a short yet succinct reply from the hulking former heavyweight champion Lesnar, who currently plies his trade as the WWE Universal Champion in his original home of pro-wrestling.
Of course, the rumors of a Jones vs. Lesnar super fight, which began to swirl when it was rumored Lesnar had re-entered the USADA testing pool, got massively ramped up when Jones answered question about the bout on a Facebook live chat during fight week. ‘Bones’ responded that he would ‘love’ to fight Lesnar, and Lesnar in turn replied that he would fight Jones ‘anytime, anywhere,’ but he had to worry about ‘DC’ first.
The all-time great Jones got past that challenge with a brutal show of the skill and power that made him arguably the greatest UFC champion in history, so a fight with a huge heavyweight like Lesnar could be on the docket for a not-so-far-off UFC pay-per-view (PPV) card.
Of course, there’s a certain 6’5″ Swede who might have something to say about that…
The stage is set and the day is finally here. With tension reaching a peak, light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier will rematch longtime rival former champion Jon Jones in the main event of tonight’s (Sat., July 29, 2017) UFC 214 from the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. The fight is, of course, the second chapter in […]
With tension reaching a peak, light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier will rematch longtime rival former champion Jon Jones in the main event of tonight’s (Sat., July 29, 2017) UFC 214 from the Honda Center in Anaheim, California.
The fight is, of course, the second chapter in their well-documented feud spanning three years, which began with their scandalous media day brawl back in 2014 and extended into their first meeting at 2015’s UFC 182, a bout which “Bones” took home by unanimous decision.
Countless issues have forced numerous re-schedulings up until now, and tonight, the fight will finally happen. To get pumped for tonight’s main event, watch their first contest courtesy of the UFC right here:
UFC 214 is here, and it goes down tonight (Saturday, July 29th) from the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. A portion of the preliminary card will air on the promotion’s streaming service, UFC Fight Pass, at 6:30 p.m. ET while the rest of the prelims will air on FXX at 8 p.m. ET. The main […]
UFC 214 is here, and it goes down tonight (Saturday, July 29th) from the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. A portion of the preliminary card will air on the promotion’s streaming service, UFC Fight Pass, at 6:30 p.m. ET while the rest of the prelims will air on FXX at 8 p.m. ET. The main card will air on PPV (pay-per-view) at 10 p.m. ET.
The event will be headlined by a light heavyweight bout between champion Daniel Cormier and former champion Jon Jones. Tyron Woodley vs. Demian Maia for the welterweight title will serve as the co-main event. Rounding out the five-bout main card is Cristiane ‘Cyborg’ Justino vs. Tonya Evinger for the vacant women’s featherweight title, Donald Cerrone vs. Robbie Lawler in a welterweight bout and Jimi Manuwa vs. Volkan Oezdemir in a light heavyweight bout.
According to oddsmakers, Jones is a -250 favorite over Cormier, who is a +230 underdog. Other odds for the main card include Maia being a +180 underdog against Woodley, who is a -220 favorite. Here are the full betting odds:
MAIN CARD (Pay-per-view, 10 p.m. ET):
Jon Jones (-250) vs. Daniel Cormier (+230)
Tyron Woodley (-220) vs. Demian Maia (+180)
Cristiane Justino (-1300) vs. Tonya Evinger (+850)
According to Jon Jones, Daniel Cormier could never be the best fighter of all time because he came into the UFC during the wrong era – the Jones era. “DC” believes otherwise, however, because if he’s able to pick up the win tomorrow (Sat. July 29, 2017) against “Bones” in the UFC 214 pay-per-view (PPV) […]
According to Jon Jones, Daniel Cormier could never be the best fighter of all time because he came into the UFC during the wrong era – the Jones era. “DC” believes otherwise, however, because if he’s able to pick up the win tomorrow (Sat. July 29, 2017) against “Bones” in the UFC 214 pay-per-view (PPV) main event, the former Olympian believes he’ll be the greatest of all time.
Following yesterday’s (Thurs. July 28, 2017) open workouts at the UFC Gym, Cormier spoke to the media to respond to Jones’ comments about having arrived in the UFC during the wrong era. Not only does Cormier believe he’ll be the greatest of all time with a win over Jones, but “DC” is convinced this is already his era (quotes via MMA Fighting):
“This is my era,” Cormier said. “I win Saturday night, and I’m the greatest fighter ever. Why is it not my era? Because he beat me one time?”
“All his praise that he’s giving himself on that victory like he dominated me tells me he did something he didn’t know he could do,” Cormier said. “He won a fight. He didn’t wipe the mat with me, but he’s walking around here like he just – he’s walking around like he beat Lyoto Machida or ‘Shogun’ Rua.”
Cormier looks forward to defeating Jones tomorrow night, and in their supposed trilogy bout if he is, in fact, successful. With two wins over Jones he’ll be able to hand “Bones” back all the drama he has had to deal with since Jones was stripped of the light heavyweight title.
Many fans have labeled Cormier as a ‘paper champ’ since he never actually defeated Jones for the belt. If Cormier is able to beat Jones in back-to-back fights, he’d like to relinquish the title to the 30-year-old so he can go through the same thing he did:
“How about I walk across the stage and say, ‘Here, how about you deal with what I’ve been dealing with the last two years?’ and leave,” Cormier said. “Would that not be the ultimate ‘f*ck you?’ I think he’ll win again after I’m done. After I beat him twice and if I walk off into the sunset, or I leave this division, he’ll be the champion again. I want him to deal with what I’ve had to deal with where he is going to be berated for something that is not in his control.”
“That’s what’s going to happen after the third fight,” Cormier said. “I’m going to say, ‘Here, this is his. I want him to be the champion right now.’ So all the people that said they gave me a title, I will literally give him the title and say, ‘You’re the champ now, deal with this (expletive).”
To the bewilderment of mixed martial arts (MMA) fans and media members across the world, tomorrow’s (Sat., July 29, 2017) stacked UFC 214 from the Honda Center in Anaheim, California, appears to be poised to go off without a hitch (fingers crossed), something that unfortunately hasn’t been the norm for a Jon Jones-headlined card in recent […]
To the bewilderment of mixed martial arts (MMA) fans and media members across the world, tomorrow’s (Sat., July 29, 2017) stacked UFC 214 from the Honda Center in Anaheim, California, appears to be poised to go off without a hitch (fingers crossed), something that unfortunately hasn’t been the norm for a Jon Jones-headlined card in recent years.
The all-time great, who was only beaten by himself and his outside-of-the-cage problems with drugs, will have yet another attempt at a comeback when he meets archrival Daniel Cormier, the stalwart champion who has won four fights in “Bones’” absence but was still beaten by the troubled ex-champ, in the UFC 214 main event. The co-main event features a closely-matched welterweight title affair between power slugger Tyron Woodley and peerless grappling whiz Demian Maia, why consensus women’s No. 1 pound-for-pound star Cris Cyborg meets former Invicta champ Tonya Evinger for the women’s featherweight belt in the event’s third title fight.
The fighters weighed in according to California’s increasingly strict weigh-in standards this morning, the results of which can be seen here. Now, the fighters will square off in the final media event of the UFC 214 build-up when the ceremonial weigh-in begins shortly at 8:00 p.m. EST. Watch the video streaming live right here:
It’s no secret that the UFC is having a tough run in the first seven months of 2017. After a banner year in 2016 with multiple pay-per-view (PPV) events eclipsing the coveted one-million buy threshold, new owners WME-IMG are finding out just what it’s like to run the world’s biggest MMA promotion in a time […]
It’s no secret that the UFC is having a tough run in the first seven months of 2017.
After a banner year in 2016 with multiple pay-per-view (PPV) events eclipsing the coveted one-million buy threshold, new owners WME-IMG are finding out just what it’s like to run the world’s biggest MMA promotion in a time of downward-trending PPVs without flagship stars Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey anywhere close to the octagon.
True, McGregor will return to the ring against Floyd Mayweather, on August 26, but that could be hurting the UFC’s actual numbers more than helping them. We’ll get to that shortly.
Regardless, both the preliminary card television ratings and pay-per-view buyrates for July 8’s UFC 213 from Las Vegas were recently revealed, and the numbers ultimately amounted to some of the most dismal overall viewership turnouts the UFC has ever seen. Now, women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes’ extremely late withdrawal from her championship bout versus Valentina Shevchenko most definitely caused the lack of buys, but the numbers are concerning nonetheless.
Things didn’t get better two weeks later when UFC on FOX 25 aired live from the Nassau Coliseum on July 22. Despite former middleweight champion Chris Weidman securing an emotional headlining win over Kelvin Gastelum in his hometown, the card had the lowest-ever ratings for a UFC on FOX event in overnight ratings, a number that rose to “only” the third-worst of all-time when the time slot spillover numbers for the main event were factored in.
That continued a disturbing decline for big FOX-aired cards in 2017, but those numbers are also simply indicative of the overall trend of the year, where pay-per-view rates have went down drastically in addition to TV-aired events and PPV prelim numbers.
There are several big underlying factors for this sharp and disturbing decline. On the eve of the biggest pay-per-view of the year, let’s take at the five most impactful.
Promoting Only McGregor & Rousey:
The UFC enjoyed their most lucrative two-year stretch in history from 2015-2016, a time when their biggest-ever crossover stars in Rousey and McGregor were winning big fights in dominant fashion. Rousey was being called the most dominant fighter in MMA, and McGregor won both the featherweight and lightweight titles while becoming the sport’s biggest star.
But that time period simply couldn’t be sustained, as Rousey infamously lost the belt to Holly Holm at UFC 193, following it up with another unsuccessful title fight in her 48-second loss to Nunes at 2016’s UFC 207, after which it appears Rousey may never fight in the UFC again.
McGregor is not gone; at least not in the same sense as Rousey. He’s obviously involved in his hyped-up boxing match with Floyd Mayweather, and while the UFC will obviously get a ton of attention and hype from that massive spectacle, it brings up one vital, overarching point – the UFC simply promoted only their top two stars in recent years, and while it clearly worked in that regard, it left them much too dependent on McGregor and Rousey for success, because their other fighters just aren’t bringing in any numbers at all.
If they ever want to get back to the level where they have their big draws and their mid-level stars; say in the time of dominant champions Anderson Silva and Georges St-Pierre where mid-level stars like Rashad Evans and Rampage Jackson could still sell an in-between card for 350-400,000 buys, they’re going to have to diversify their promotional strategy.
Cormier looks forward to defeating Jones tomorrow night, and in their supposed trilogy bout if he is, in fact, successful. With two wins over Jones he’ll be able to hand “Bones” back all the drama he has had to deal with since Jones was stripped of the light heavyweight title.
