Joe Duffy laces ’em up this weekend at UFC Fight Night 107 in London. He’s perhaps not the most famous guy on the UFC roster, even if he’s 3-1 in the promotion and serving as a headliner for the prelims on Fight Pass against Reza Medadi. He’s also a pr…
Joe Duffy laces ’em up this weekend at UFC Fight Night 107 in London. He’s perhaps not the most famous guy on the UFC roster, even if he’s 3-1 in the promotion and serving as a headliner for the prelims on Fight Pass against Reza Medadi. He’s also a pretty exciting customer, owner of a Performance of the Night bonus and participant in a solid tilt with Dustin Poirier at UFC 195 during his UFC career.
Luckily he doesn’t need a push from the UFC or anyone else to be memorable. Why? Because Joe Duffy has a quick, clean win over superstar Conor McGregor, and no one can ever take it away from him.
Back in 2010 McGregor was a 4-1 upstart fighting in Cage Warriors FC. He was predictably brash and self-assured, but he was in the early days of developing the persona that has made him the biggest star in the sport today.
On those terms he battled Duffy in a lightweight bout and, probably to the surprise of those who know nothing of his work before being the face of the UFC, was convincingly dispatched of. As seen in the video below, Duffy easily ragdolls McGregor, stifles him on the ground and throttles him senseless.
Total time required? 38 seconds.
Of course iron sharpens iron, you learn more from a loss and all that jazz. The Duffy setback did little to deter McGregor, who went on to win his next 15 bouts in a row.
Still, we’ll always talk about that time that Irish Joe did a number on Ireland’s favorite son.
For the first time since 2012, a new voice will call the action at a North American UFC event when Todd Grisham takes over the play-by-play duties for the UFC on Fox Sports 1, Sunday in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
A veteran of the WWE and ESPN, Grish…
For the first time since 2012, a new voice will call the action at a North American UFC event when Todd Grisham takes over the play-by-play duties for the UFC on Fox Sports 1, Sunday in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
A veteran of the WWE and ESPN, Grisham will partner with retired middleweight Brian Stann to provide live, blow-by-blow coverage of the event, headlined by heavyweights Travis Browne and Derrick Lewis.
Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Snowden sat down with Grisham days before his debut to talk about his career, the inimitable Vince McMahon and the unique challenges MMA presents to even the most experienced broadcaster.
Bleacher Report:A month or so ago, you changed Twitter handles and launched a new life. For people on the outside, a move like this appears so sudden. Did this happen out of the blue or had it been in the works for some time?
Todd Grisham: I’d been covering UFC for ESPN for five years. I’d done tons of UFC pay-per-views and some Fight Nights. So, I was familiar with the product and they were familiar with me. When my contract came up with ESPN two years ago, we had some preliminary conversations and I met with them. We almost came to an agreement then, but it didn’t work out.
My deal came up again and I reached out to them to fire talks back up. And here I am.
B/R: I know you’ve called Glory World Series kickboxing matches recently and filled in on play-by-play for the beloved, dearly departed Friday Night Fights. But MMA is such a complex beast. Did you have to try out or anything before they decided to bring you on board?
Grisham: I went out to Vegas and called some fights with Dominick Cruz and Daniel Cormier and met with the executive producer and (producer) Zach Candito. And I went out a second time and called some fights with Brian Stann. And, thanks to MMA Live, I’ve done work with Chael Sonnen and they’ve seen me interact with their athletes dozens of times.
B/R: It’s an interesting time to be joining the UFC team. Not only is there new ownership, but your signing came in the wake of longtime announcer Mike Goldberg’s departure. Has that timing been awkward in any way, with fans attaching your arrival with his departure?
Grisham: No, because I’m not replacing Mike Goldberg. He mostly called the big shows, the pay-per-views, and that’s the stuff Jon Anik is doing. If anything, I’m replacing what Jon did and doing the things he did before Goldberg left. So there hasn’t really been any backlash directed at me.
B/R: I’m going to out myself now as a longtime fan of professional wrestling, where you had your first big break as a commentator for WWE. How did you make that leap, from a local sports show in Tucson, Arizona, to a national brand seen all over the world?
Grisham: Like every single male, I was a huge fan of WWF when I was a kid. Saturday Night’s Main Event, all that stuff? I loved it. I had been the local sports guy in Tucson, covering the University of Arizona. That was our big beat. One day a viewer sent me an email that said WWE had an opening for on-air talent and that I’d be perfect for it, because I had been doing all these goofy high school football skits on Friday nights. So I took a shot and sent them a resume tape on VHS.
B/R: Wow. And they found your tape on what must have been quite a pile of auditions?
Grisham: I didn’t hear anything for a couple of months. Next thing you know, they call me out of the blue on a Friday and ask me to fly up to New York City for an audition on Monday. Went up there, did the audition and didn’t hear anything for a couple of months, and assumed I didn’t get the gig. Then, out of nowhere again, they called and made me an offer. I ended up being there for eight years.
B/R: WWE has quite an operation. That must have been quite an experience. What did you learn there that you’ve kept with you at ESPN and will bring with you to UFC?
Grisham: You’ve got to be entertaining. That was Vince McMahon’s big thing. (Does a McMahon impression) “Entertain me.”
There were times when a match would end early and I’d be at the Gorilla position, which is where Vince sits and the wrestlers gather before they go out to the ring. I remember him saying “Three minutes. We need three minutes from you. Go entertain the crowd.” I’d have to walk out in front of 18,000 people and figure out how to entertain them for a couple of minutes. It was crazy.
You learned from the best. I remember sitting there drinking coffee with Ric Flair and talking with Jerry “The King” Lawler. It was surreal. Having a beer with Harley Race. It was like being in the circus. I was on the road for eight years, 51 weeks a year. When you have a family, it’s hard and you start thinking about settling down a little bit.
B/R: When you read the wrestling media, the opposition party, in the parlance of our times, is a guy named Kevin Dunn.
Grisham: (Laughs)
B/R: He’s blamed for every decision hardcore fans don’t like and he’s kind of vilified. But when I look at WWE under his tenure as the producer of Monday Night Raw, I see a promotion and a television show on the cutting edge. The gold standards, in combat sports television, have always been HBO Boxing and WWE wrestling. Did you learn a lot under his wing as a broadcaster?
Grisham: WWE hires the best. The camera guys there have done Monday Night Football. They’ve done Super Bowls. They’ve done the Olympics. Kevin Dunn is probably the best producer I’ve ever worked with and I’ve been at ESPN for the last five years. So I don’t say that lightly.
At WWE, you’ve got to know what you’re talking about and you need to know how to do what you’re supposed to do. If you do your job, you’ll be fine. But it’s high-level work. The truck they have there is on par with Monday Night Football‘s truck. WWE was shooting in HD before Major League Baseball or the NHL.
They are always on the forefront of the latest technology and trends. WWE is on it. Even social media. Just look at the numbers. It’s insane. Everything they do, production-wise, is second-to-none. It’s actually very similar to UFC that way.
B/R: When you were an announcer for WWE, you weren’t in a journalist’s role. You were part of the show.
At ESPN, it was different. With Teddy Atlas there, giving his unvarnished opinions, there was always going to be a separation between the broadcaster and the promotion. He wasn’t shy about leveling criticism or praise as warranted. That was journalism.
This role with the UFC is kind of a hybrid. Fox Sports is the broadcaster, but the UFC produces its own shows. Do you have a feel yet for whether your role is more like WWE or more like ESPN boxing?
Grisham: This is my first show, so I don’t really know what’s going to come out of my mouth yet. No one has really told me what to say or what not to say, which was certainly how it worked at WWE. I’m just going to go out there and do what I do. Obviously UFC is the promoter and they do air the fights. I don’t actually know what to expect in that regard.
I’m a fan first and foremost. I went to UFC 14 in 1997 in Birmingham, Alabama, to watch Mark Coleman fight Maurice Smith. When I’m calling fights, no matter what it is, it’s my job to make the guys look as good as they can, tell their stories and make people care about them. Whether it’s WWE, football, boxing or UFC, that’s the main job of the “play-by-play guy.”
B/R: When you were getting your reps, calling these practice fights with Dominick Cruz and Brian Stann, what did you find was different about MMA? In boxing, to me, it seems like there’s usually time to settle in and tell the stories you want to tell. If the fight is well-matched, you’re going to be there a while. In MMA, things happen so quickly. Did you find yourself in a rush to use your material before it was all over?
Grisham: It was interesting, because when I’m calling a fight with Dominick Cruz, what am I going to say about what the fighters are doing on the ground that will be better than what Cruz has to say? So, especially when the action is on the ground, I’m going to sit back in my chair and maybe light up a cigarette and let him do his thing.
B/R: (Laughs)
Grisham: In kickboxing, anyone can see that one guy kicked the other guy in the leg. In boxing, even with Teddy Atlas, I would sometimes give my opinion about what was happening. He’d shut me down half the time, but I don’t think I’ll be trying that in UFC, especially when the fight is on the ground. There may be things happening on the ground that the regular fan doesn’t see. Things that are being set up that anyone who isn’t a Brazilian jiu-jitsu blackbelt doesn’t see. Whoever is in there with me, I don’t want to step on their toes.
B/R: What advice have the producers for Sunday’s show given you to help make this a smooth transition?
Grisham: Michael La Plante, Zach Candito and Craig Borsari have all been in touch. It’s such a difficult sport to broadcast. If you’re calling a football game, it’s a football game. With UFC, anybody can do all the prep work and get their backgrounds and their statistics. To me, the most difficult stuff are the things that happen in between. Stretching for 20 seconds when they need it before a break, making sure you read the promos at the right time. All the minute details you have to script out and plan so carefully. That’s where you can really shine or crash and burn.
B/R: And no one may even know if you’re doing well.
Grisham: If you’re shining, the average fan doesn’t even notice. You’re just reading a promo. But if you mess up and don’t talk about MetroPCS when you’re supposed to, the people in the truck notice. And there will be hell to pay.
B/R: Is it best if you call these fights in Halifax and no one even thinks about the fact there is a new guy in the booth? Is that a victory?
Grisham: Not quite at a referee level. They say with a good referee, you don’t even know he or she is there.
To me, the blow-by-blow announcer has to be there for that magic moment, that “Holy s–t” moment. That’s when people notice whether you’re good or not. If someone gets knocked cold, like to the frozen tundra, you can’t just say “a headkick knockout.” You have to show up for that. That doesn’t cut it. At least for me. That’s where you shine.
I’ll have to find that chemistry with whoever I’m working with. Sunday, it’s Brian Stann. And Brian has told me point blank, “If I feel a finish coming, I’m going to lay out and let you do your thing.”
In the wrestling business, they call it “getting your s–t in.” Brian’s going to get his s–t in, his People’s Elbow, which is breaking down the complex action. That’s what he does well. And he’s going to let me call the finish, which hypothetically I do well.
I don’t really have a catchphrase. I just need to get excited at the right times and not say anything stupid. That’s the low bar I’ve set for myself. Don’t f–k it up. That’s my goal.
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
This past Saturday at UFC on Fox 23, Jorge Masvidal put on the most impressive performance of his 14-year professional MMA career. His opponent, Donald Cerrone, had been knocked out only twice in his previous 40 MMA fights before stepping into the cage…
This past Saturday at UFC on Fox 23, Jorge Masvidal put on the most impressive performance of his 14-year professional MMA career. His opponent, Donald Cerrone, had been knocked out only twice in his previous 40 MMA fights before stepping into the cage with Masvidal.
If you weren’t familiar with Gamebred heading into this fight, you’re probably not the only one. Despite his 42 professional MMA fights prior to this one, he had always come up short in his most high-profile bouts. He had yet to produce a star-making performance.
His victory over Cowboy changed all that.
Given that Masvidal’s name is hotter than ever, it’s worth looking back in time when he competed in backyard fights. His two most high-profile fights came against Kimbo’s protege. Ray was the bigger and seemingly stronger fighter, but Masvidal used his superior technique and speed to wear him down and pick him apart. In both fights, Ray was left with no choice but to quit (warning: NFSW language).
“He was going nuts. He took me out to eat dinner and at the time I was dead broke. He took me to this fancy-ass place and at the time I was like, ‘Damn, this dude’s balling.’ And it was just cool as (expletive). I thought we were going to have to do some thugged-out (expletive), like run out on the bill, but he paid for the whole thing. I was like, ‘Man, this is some crazy (expletive).'”
All these years later and Gamebred appears to be in the best fight shape of his life. Perhaps he’s finally on his way to making a title run, assuming he can string together a few more impressive wins.
By now, most people recognize the key pages in the Donald Trump playbook. An ambitious effort starts with a bang but ends with the rumor of a whimper tucked deep into classified legal briefs, well clear of the camera’s eye.
The sports world has not gon…
By now, most people recognize the key pages in the Donald Trump playbook. An ambitious effort starts with a bang but ends with the rumor of a whimper tucked deep into classified legal briefs, well clear of the camera’s eye.
The sports world has not gone unscathed. Trump’s ill-fated involvement with the United States Football League ended in a pungent stew of red tape and bad feelings and is the stuff of sports-business infamy.
Speaking to Esquire about the debacle, Charley Steiner, radio voice of the USFL‘s Trump-owned New Jersey Generals and current play-by-play man for the Los Angeles Dodgers, said of Trump, “You can cut and paste the USFL and the GOP and it’s the same damn story. It’s all about him and the brand and moving on to the next thing if it doesn’t work out.”
The USFL is the splashiest sports example, but it is not, to coin a phrase, the Trumpiest. For that, you have to go to the sport of mixed martial arts, where he and his organization’s intimate, aggressive involvement wove a very recognizable pattern. Crack open that nesting doll and you’ll find Trump’s dealings with Affliction Entertainment. Although it holds a lower profile than the USFL example, it is still the best sports illustration of Trump’s modusoperandi.
But let’s back up a few years. In point of fact, Trump does have deep roots in the MMA community. In MMA’s earlier days, his backing may have staved off the sport’s demise.
In 2001, when UFC 1 was only eight years old, MMA was in the eyes of many a novelty or worse. The UFC had been sold to Zuffa, a company owned by Las Vegas casino heirs Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta and their friend Dana White. At that point, many major markets and media had turned their collective back to the UFC, forcing the promotion to stage untelevised cards in third-tier civic centers.
Trump broke with that custom, however, and welcomed the UFC with open arms. He offered Trump TajMahal in Atlantic City, New Jersey—a major step up in location and prestige—as a potential host location. The new owners took him up on his offer, and the Trump Taj hosted UFC 30 and UFC 31 that year. (That venue also hosted UFC 28, the final event staged by previous UFC owners SEG.)
White never forgot the gesture and reciprocated with unconditional loyalty, culminating with his bellowed endorsement of Trump on prime-time TV at July’s Republican National Convention:
Arenas around the world refused to host our events. Nobody took us seriously. Nobody. Except Donald Trump. Donald was the first guy that recognized the potential that we saw in the UFC, and encouraged us to build our business. He hosted our first two events at his venue, he dealt with us personally, he got in the trenches with us, and he made a deal that worked for everyone. On top of that, he showed up for the fight on Saturday night and sat in the front row! … Donald championed the UFC before it was popular, before it grew into a successful business, and I will always be so grateful to him for standing with us in those early days, so tonight I stand with Donald Trump.
Clearly, the relationship held special meaning for White. That context only makes it more interesting to recall that Trump’s deepest dive into MMA came with a company that was, at the time, hell-bent on taking down the UFC.
In 2008, Affliction Clothing, a manufacturer of MMA apparel based in Seal Beach, California, decided to stage a rare and brazen challenge to the UFC’s dominance. Affliction Entertainment was formed as a separate company to stage pay-per views with the ambition of cutting into the UFC’s revenue pie.
Seeking the biggest possible splash, Affliction execs threw a mountain of money and every other shiny thing they could find at Russian heavyweight great FedorEmelianenko—long a UFC white whale—and ex-UFC champ Tim Sylvia. According to MMAjunkie, the former reportedly received $300,000 per bout, while the latter received $800,000—even eight years later, extremely handsome sums for MMA fighters.
But Affliction’s biggest flourish arguably came from a little deal it struck with a man called Donald Trump. Just ask Trump himself. There was something tremendous in the air.
“It’s really something that I’m doing because I enjoy doing it,” Trump told reporters during a Trump Tower news conference for Affliction Entertainment. “If we make money, that’s great. I think we will. I think it will be successful. What I do is usually successful.”
In the same news conference, Trump flashed the same brand of media awareness that has characterized his political career.
“I seem to get a lot of attention,” he noted. “For instance, if I wasn’t here today, you might have maybe one writer. And now the place is packed.”
According to some people, the partnership was purely cosmetic—Trump simply lent his face and name to a photo op and press release.
“They brought in Donald Trump for name value,” said Josh Gross, who covered the story while with SI.com and is now a contributor to Bleacher Report MMA. “They used his name for publicity, which happens a lot with Trump.”
But if you’re in the dicey business of reading Trump’s tea leaves, it could have been more than window dressing.
Trump declared he had bought a significant stake in the company, which would allow the upstart promotion to pursue and retain roster talent.
“But it’s not a very big deal for me,” he said. “When you build a billion-dollar building like I’m doing in Dubai and lots of other places, that’s a much bigger financial commitment.”
Maybe not a very big deal for Trump, but whatever it was, it seems to have come with a catch.
“People for Trump said they were running it,” Gross said.
There was one very direct, concrete connection between Affliction Entertainment and Team Trump. That came when Affliction announced Michael Cohen, executive vice president in The Trump Organization and special counsel to Trump himself, as the venture’s new chief operating officer.
“I can assure everyone,” Cohen said at the time in a statement, “fans watching on pay-per-view and those in attendance from all over the world, that our upcoming pay-per-view show will be the greatest MMA night ever.”
Trump’s son, Donald Jr., speaking with Men’s Fitness magazine (h/t Politico), seemed to support the notion that his father didn’t just lend out his name but his capital as well.
“If we have to put in more, we’ll put in more,” he said. (Politico added in its report that a source “familiar with the deal” believed Trump didn’t invest any money, but instead only licensed his name.)
Trump capped the lead-up to Affliction’s first event—code-named “Banned”—by taking center stage at the weigh-ins(note: NSFW language in video). He introduced Lindsay Clubine, then best known as Briefcase Model No. 26 on Deal or No Deal, confirming that she’d be covering the event for Extra.
“Can you believe this is what a reporter looks like?” he said.
Fight night was July 19, 2008. Fedor vs. Sylvia topped the Affliction: Banned card, and Emelianenko dismantled Sylvia with a 36-second submission. The event also included knockout wins from Andrei Arlovski (against Ben Rothwell) and Josh Barnett (against Pedro Rizzo).
Nevertheless, Affliction: Banned was only a mild success, garnering about 100,000 buys, according to Wrestling Observer Newsletter (via MMAPayout.com)—far below UFC averages. That might have had something to do with the UFC’s cable TV counterprogramming, which featured Anderson Silva’s light heavyweight debut in an unspoken game of “My GOAT vs. Your GOAT.”
During the event, Clubine got the opportunity to interview Trump and asked him if he thought Affliction would end up taking over the UFC. He said: “It probably will. … All the fighters want to be with us, and I think it probably will take over.”
The second event, Affliction: Day of Reckoning, featured Emelianenko‘s thrilling come-from-behind knockout of Arlovski but failed to reach the modest bar set by the first event. A third card, headlined by Emelianenko against Barnett, was scheduled for August 2009 but never came to fruition after Barnett failed a drug test for steroids.
Just days after canceling its third event, Affliction Entertainment—hemorrhaging cash and unable to gain the pay-per-view traction needed for a profit—folded as suddenly as it had popped up and returned to the UFC as a sponsor.
You don’t see Donald Trump in a lot of Affliction pictures during this late era. Ditto Cohen, who is now back with the Trump family.
“They weren’t looking to create a viable, sustainable system,” Gross said. “It was a response to the UFC. They weren’t looking to create a lasting league.”
Good thing for Team Trump they didn’t appear to be on the hook for the fallout.
Not long after Affliction threw in the towel, the company was embroiled in a lawsuit with Emelianenko and his manager, VadimFinkelstein, who ran the M-1 Global organization that co-promoted Affliction Entertainment shows.
In the suit, Emelianenko and Finkelstein claimed Affliction execs did not do enough to salvage the third event, in part because they had had enough of the fight promotion game and were attempting to mend fences with the UFC.
Neither Trump nor Cohen was named in the suit, which was settled out of court in 2011.
A spokesperson for Affliction declined to comment for this story.
“Affliction was a flash in the pan,” Gross said. “They definitely put more money in fighters’ pockets than they otherwise would have gotten. They tried to compete with the UFC in the pay-per-view space, but it didn’t really work. The numbers just weren’t there. They probably bit off more than they could chew.”
Was that true of the guys then running the T-shirt company that started this? Probably. But to its credit, Affliction, with fight promoting firmly in its rearview mirror, continues to kick along as a popular MMA-affiliated apparel company.
The same can’t be said for Trump, who hasn’t been heard from in the sport since. Perhaps not surprising, given the familiar contours of the Trump enterprise. At this point, most people are able to recognize the telltale signs, from beginning to end.
“I’ve got a lot of money,” Trump said back at that first Affliction presser. “That helps, right?”
The UFC has been a pay-per-view business since its inception, but it has never experienced a stretch of business as successful as it has in the last year. A company that broke the threshold of a million buys on seven occasions before 2015 has…
The UFC has been a pay-per-view business since its inception, but it has never experienced a stretch of business as successful as it has in the last year. A company that broke the threshold of a million buys on seven occasions before 2015 has now done so five times in the last 10 months.
How?
Conor McGregor.
Of those five pay-per-views, McGregor headlined three. UFC 196 and UFC 202, his two bouts against Nate Diaz, either set or were close to setting the record for buys, the rematch surpassing even the ballyhooed UFC 100 card in 2009 that featured Brock Lesnar and Georges St-Pierre.
Including his strong performance as the headliner of UFC 189, McGregor has sold a grand total of 5,275,000 pay-per-views in four outings at the top of the card. For comparison, St-Pierre’s last six efforts after UFC 100 sold 4,635,000. The four cards Lesnar headlined between 2009 and 2011 had 4,095,000 total buys.
St-Pierre and Lesnar are McGregor’s only competitors for this title, and he has blown them out of the water by any reasonable metric.
Buyrates aren’t the only measure; gate receipts also point to McGregor’s drawing power. Each of the four events McGregor has headlined in Las Vegas produced more gate revenue than any prior show held in the city.
Moreover, McGregor is a fixture on the late-night television circuit and ESPN in a way Lesnar and St-Pierre never were. He’s a genuine celebrity. Part-time actor Ronda Rousey, the other head of the UFC’s current pay-per-view monster, is even more of a fixture in mainstream entertainment culture, though she hasn’t produced quite as much box-office success.
Rousey and McGregor represent the endpoint of a long, ongoing trend in the UFC’s pay-per-view business: the ever-increasing importance of star power to sell to the public.
To be clear, star power has always mattered. Fans have historically been more likely to drop their hard-earned money on recognizable fighters than on no-name competitors. With that said, though, the extent to which fans will buy outside the biggest names has varied a great deal in the last eight years.
I examined the buyrate for every pay-per-view dating back to 2005—when the success of The Ultimate Fighter brought the UFC to the fringes of the mainstream—and clear patterns emerged from 2008 to the present. The UFC’s pay-per-view business had gone through multiple cycles since then that have led to the current, star-driven state of affairs exemplified by McGregor and Rousey.
Let’s start with simple annual sales totals and average buyrates, beginning in 2008:
Year
Total Pay-Per-View Buys
Number of Events
Average Buyrate
2008
6,325,000
12
527,083
2009
8,020,000
13
616,923
2010
8,805,000
15
587,000
2011
6,485,000
16
405,313
2012
5,835,000
13
448,846
2013
6,075,000
13
467,308
2014
3,200,000
12
266,667
2015
7,550,000
13
580,769
2016
6,455,000
9
717,222
Outside of 2014, when the pay-per-view side of the UFC’s business took a massive nosedive, the total buyrates have been stable over the last nine years.
2009 was an outstanding year, largely driven by the success of the UFC 100 card that set a record with 1.6 million buys, while the UFC sold a staggering 8.805 million units in 2010. 2015 and 2016 (so far) have been outstanding as well. Even without another outing from McGregor or the return of Rousey or St-Pierre, 2016 will surpass 2015’s total.
If we’re looking at total buys, the period from 2008 to 2013 doesn’t show much change: a peak, perhaps an artificial one, but then a return to a stable baseline. When we dig deeper, however, we see a fundamental shift in that period, one that came to fruition in 2014’s crisis before the rebound in 2015 and 2016.
Hints of that trend emerge in 2011. By any metric, 2010 was a huge success for the UFC on pay-per-view; its average buyrate was only a touch below that of 2009’s record-breaking total despite running more events, and 8.805 million total buys is absurd.
Superficially, 2011 was another strong year, with 6.485 million units sold. It took 16 events to reach that mark, however, and the per-event average was down by roughly 180,000 from 2010. The averages were a bit higher in 2012 and 2013, but were still well below where they had been between 2008 and 2010 despite running strong total sales.
2014’s epic disaster—3.2 million units sold at an average of 266,667 per event—the lowest total since 2005—when the UFC sold a paltry 950,000 pay-per-views—was the culmination of the trend that had emerged in the prior few years rather than marking something new.
What was that trend? An increasing reliance on a few big names, specifically St-Pierre and Anderson Silva, to sell events.
Let’s break that down a bit. Between 2008 and 2011, the UFC was a pay-per-view product. It ran regular events on Spike TV and eventually Versus, but every fight with any name value required the consumer to pay to watch.
Those consumers made up a substantial, loyal audience. The UFC went from UFC 86 to UFC 108 without dropping below 300,000 buys, and by and large, pay-per-view cards were both deep enough on paper and entertaining enough in practice to retain viewer loyalty.
Consider UFC 109 as an example. Injuries gutted the card, which featured a main event of Randy Couture against a shot Mark Coleman, with a then-unknown Chael Sonnen facing Nate Marquardt in the co-main. It still did 275,000buys.
We might point to the Fox deal, which began in 2012, as the turning point. That is, after all, when the UFC went from being a pay-per-view company that did the occasional TV event to a TV company that did some pay-per-views.
That would be wrong, though. The turning point came in 2011. Why?
Because that’s when the UFC oversaturated the pay-per-view market. It did so in a mistaken belief in the inexhaustible power of the UFC brand to sell fights, seemingly operating under the assumption that the fans would buy anything as long as it had those three letters on the marquee. On the contrary, fans rebelled and the brand lost its value as a guarantee of pay-per-view quality.
Moreover, an entire generation of stars such as BJ Penn, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and even Lesnar moved on into irrelevance in 2011. The fighters who replaced them didn’t have their drawing power.
Take Jon Jones. His 2011 was one for the record books as he defeated Ryan Bader in February and took the light heavyweight title from Mauricio Rua in dominating fashion in March. He then defended the belt against Jackson and Lyoto Machida before year’s end. It was one of the most impressive runs in the history of the sport, and it should have turned him into a star.
Yet none of that turned Jones into a big-time draw. He sold right around what previous light heavyweight title fights had done—500,000 buys—despite the fact that a well-promoted fight between Jackson and Rashad Evans had broken a million buys the year before. Even now, Jones has never gotten over the hump.
Or look at Frankie Edgar, who replaced Penn as the lightweight champion. Edgar’s two headlining efforts in 2011 drew just 260,000 and 225,000 buys, while Penn had drawn 620,000, 850,000 and 920,000 in his three prior outings on pay-per-view. Meanwhile, the two losses to Edgar damaged Penn as a draw, and his two headliners in 2011 drew just 260,000 and 280,000 buys.
The same thing happened at heavyweight. Cain Velasquez brutalized Lesnar to win the title in October 2010, but Velasquez fell to Junior Dos Santos by knockout in his first title defense (on Fox, not pay-per-view) the next year. Neither Velasquez nor Dos Santos ever approached Lesnar’s substantial drawing power. Lesnar’s last headlining fight in 2011 drew only 535,000 buys, barely half of what he’d notched in his two prior bouts.
So the UFC put on too many pay-per-view cards—many of which were subpar in quality compared to the heyday of 2008-10—at the same time as its big draws were getting old and the replacements weren’t as compelling to the audience.
The baseline drawing power of the UFC brand fell.
Between 2011 and 2013, the average buyrate per event dropped substantially, but it was always above 400,000. This average concealed the fact that only Silva and St-Pierre were the only fighters consistently drawing at a high rate.
Year
Silva and St-Pierre Average (Percent of Year’s Total)
All Other Headliners Average
2011
620,000 (29 percent, three events)
355,769
2012
678,333 (35 percent, three events)
380,000
2013
788,750 (52 percent, four events)
324,444
Three-Year Average
705,000 (10 events)
354,531
During that three-year stretch, Silva and St-Pierre headlined 10 events (six for Silva, four for St-Pierre). The two combined to average 705,000 buys per event, including the only event, UFC 168, to do more than a million buys between 2011 and 2013. Events not headlined by those two drew just over half their average at 354,531.
That trend reached its most striking level in 2013, when Silva and St-Pierre combined to sell a staggering 3,155,000 pay-per-views, 52 percent of the year’s total.
The two stars’ herculean efforts disguised just how weak the UFC brand had become on pay-per-view. Multiple cards, two each in 2012 and 2013, failed to break the 200,000-buy mark. That hadn’t happened since 2005, when Andrei Arlovski and Paul Buentello headlined UFC 55.
Essentially, hundreds of thousands of formerly reliable pay-per-view buyers had left the UFC’s market during that three-year stretch. They might have shown up for the biggest names, but they no longer found it necessary to buy every card, or even most of them.
And what happened in 2014? Silva was injured the entire year and St-Pierre had retired. Without its two biggest stars, the UFC’s pay-per-view business collapsed.
UFC 175, which featured both Chris Weidman and Ronda Rousey, did 545,000 buys. No other event did more than 350,000. Four cards failed to crack 200,000 buys. The abysmal UFC 174 and UFC 177 cards, the latter of which lost one of its main event fighters in a weight-cutting mishap, did 115,000 and 125,000 buys respectively.
Aside from the fact that Silva and St-Pierre were out of action, even normally reliable draws seemed to have lost their ability to part viewers from their money. Jones drew just 350,000 buys against Glover Teixeira at UFC 172, on the heels of only 310,000 against Alexander Gustafsson in September 2013.
There’s no sugarcoating it: 2014 was a disaster, but it was a calamity whose roots had been percolating for a while.
Even comparing the year’s average of 266,667 buys to the 2011-2013 averages without Silva and St-Pierre, nearly 100,000 formerly reliable pay-per-view customers stopped buying events, further damaging the brand that had already taken serious hits after its peak between 2008 and 2010.
So what happened in 2015 and 2016 to turn things around? McGregor and Rousey, especially the former.
Let’s crunch the numbers. McGregor has sold 5,275,000 pay-per-views in the last two years, while Rousey sold 2,600,000 in her three headlining efforts in 2015. That’s 56 percent of the total, accounting for seven of 22 events with an average of 1,125,000 per event. Other headliners averaged 408,667 buys in 2015 and 2016.
The UFC’s reliance on its biggest stars to sell the lion’s share of pay-per-views hasn’t changed. The average buyrate has ticked up from the cards not headlined by Silva or St-Pierre between 2011 and 2013, as well as from 2014’s dismal showing, but it’s not drastically higher.
Moreover, 2015 benefited from the well-promoted grudge match between Daniel Cormier and Jones, an outlier for both fighters’ average drawing power, and 2016’s outstanding UFC 200 card drew its 1,200,000 estimated buys from its unmatched depth—the main card featured seven current or former champions—and Lesnar’s return.
In sum, despite its success with McGregor and to a lesser extent Rousey, the UFC hasn’t replicated the consumer faith in its baseline pay-per-view product that led to such a high average buyrate in its heyday between 2008 and 2010.
For example, two cards headlined by Demetrious Johnson in 2015 drew 115,000 and 125,000 buys. A stacked UFC 192 card featuring light heavyweight champion Cormier and former champion Rashad Evans drew a paltry 250,000 buys. In 2016, the UFC 199 card featuring a pair of title fights sold just 320,000 units, and the stacked UFC 198 card before it pulled under 300,000.
The UFC’s pay-per-view business is doing bigger numbers in the aggregate than it has since its heyday, but that success is largely the result of McGregor’s drawing power. Rousey, too, was a central component of that, and unless the loss to Holly Holm ruined her as a star, she is another piece of the UFC’s foundation on pay TV.
What does all of this mean?
McGregor represents the culmination of the UFC’s reliance on its stars. The audience that will pay for anything is tiny—hundreds of thousands of buyers smaller than it was back between 2008 and 2010.
If McGregor retires young, something he has mentioned several times, and Rousey never returns, the promotion will be only slightly better off than it was during its 2014 doldrums. While it derives income from a vast array of sources, including Fight Pass and its U.S. and international TV deals, the structural issues of the UFC’s pay-per-view business haven’t changed despite its recent success.
The emergence of transcendent stars hasn’t solved those fundamental problems; it has merely disguised them.
All pay-per-view buyrate numbers are sourced by Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Newsletter and then compiled by MMA Payoutand/or posted on MMA Fightingby Meltzer himself. These numbers are estimates, and real figures, which are almost never reported, may vary by as much as 30 percent in either direction. For this article, however, what matters is that the methodology for the estimates is internally consistent. Gate revenue is released after each event by the state athletic commission.
Patrick Wyman is the Senior MMA Analyst for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Heavy Hands Podcast, your source for the finer points of face-punching. For the history enthusiasts out there, he also hosts The Fall of Rome Podcast on the end of the Roman Empire. He can be found on Twitter and on Facebook.
CM Punk achieved some of the greatest feats in professional wrestling, working his way from Illinois bingo halls to tightly packed football stadiums and putting on some of the best matches in history.
He has amassed a huge following over the years…
CM Punk achieved some of the greatest feats in professional wrestling, working his way from Illinois bingo halls to tightly packed football stadiums and putting on some of the best matches in history.
He has amassed a huge following over the years to the point he was given a contract to fight in the UFC on his name value alone. With that in mind, it’s worth taking a look at Punk’s career and picking out the moments that turned the Second City Saint into the star he is today.
To tackle this tall task, the Bleacher Report MMA and WWE teams have come together to highlight the seven moments that define Punk’s career to this point.
Joe Duffy laces ’em up this weekend at UFC Fight Night 107 in London. He’s perhaps not the most famous guy on the UFC roster, even if he’s 3-1 in the promotion and serving as a headliner for the prelims on Fight Pass against Reza Medadi. He’s also a pretty exciting customer, owner of a Performance of the Night bonus and participant in a solid tilt with Dustin Poirier at UFC 195 during his UFC career.