Tag: MMA News

Wrong Again

A while back I questioned Adam Swift’s prediction that UFC 83 would be a strong PPV performer. Well, if you’ve been following my “work” you’re probably not surprised to find out that Swift was right and I was wrong:

According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, UFC 83, which featured Georges St. Pierre v. Matt Serra, drew 525,000 buys based on the first industry estimate of the event. Early estimates typically rise as more numbers come in and the event is reportedly tracking ahead of both of Randy Couture’s fights from last year which did 540,000 and 520,000 respectively.

Many sources relying on google trends and other internet traffic based methods of predicting pay-per-view buys had predicted that the event would come in average to below. Based on the strong storytelling behind GSP-Serra and anecdotal evidence, MMAPayout.com correctly predicated that the event would surprise to the upside. MMAPayout.com has since learned that the highly praised Countdown show for the event drew an above average 782,000 viewers.

The thing that threw me off more than anything else was the small bump in traffic we had here at BE for UFC 83. We got a much bigger bump for the Anderson Silva/Dan Henderson fight, which was a dud on PPV.

GSP A Casualty of Tito's Ego

In a recent interview with MMA Mania, Tito Ortiz decided to sacrifice Georges St. Pierre to his own ego:

Adam Wagner (MMAmania.com): So are you saying that a lot of these fighters who we see on television as the faces of the UFC, do you think that behind the scenes, they are commenting on that type of thing but are just afraid to say it?

Tito Ortiz: Of course they’re commenting on it. There are all kinds of guys … Georges St. Pierre, I know he’s very disgusted with the UFC, but it’s just one of those things where they give him little small things that he thinks are great. He gets a brand new Hummer, like “Wow, I get an awesome new Hummer” (and it) costs 50 grand, and all of a sudden I gotta pay taxes on it, and I gotta pay for gas, and dutta-dutta-duh.

This is a pathetic tactic either way.  If this is a lie, it really shows how low Tito is in general.  If it’s true, Tito has no business outing it, and GSP is probably keeping the disagreement private for a reason.