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UFC 173 vs. Bellator 120: Which Did More Web Traffic?

Despite the UFC’s legal team being among CagePotato’s most avid readers, we can’t convince them to give us any insights into the UFC’s PPV business. We can only judge a card’s interest by the PPV estimates that circulate a few weeks after an event has passed.

There’s another way to judge fans’ interest in a particular fight card though: Web traffic.

In between discussions about which IFL team was the best (I’m a huge Quad City Silverbacks fan), we at CagePotato headquarters started opining about how Bellator 120: Rampage vs. King Mo would compare to a low-level UFC PPV. Some of us said it’d bury an event like UFC 173: Barao vs. Dillashaw in terms of traffic, some of us said it would get buried.

Now that fight week(end) is over, we can jump into AnalyticsPotato mode and see which fight card wowed the web more. And to be clear, I’m using unique page views as the primary metric to judge interest. And by “coverage” we mean articles before/during/after the card that are about the card. Seems obvious but it’s important to be clear.

Earlier in the week, we reported on the CagePotato twitter that Bellator 120 received about 34% more traffic, but that calculation was made in error. There were a couple of articles in our UFC 173 coverage that I forgot to include in the tally. However, even with these pieces added, Bellator 120 still wins out. Bellator 120’s coverage, on the whole, received 11% more traffic than UFC 173’s.

Other random insights:

By Matt Saccaro

There’s another way to judge fans’ interest in a particular fight card though: Web traffic.

Earlier in the week, we reported on the CagePotato twitter that Bellator 120 received about 34% more traffic, but that calculation was made in error. There were a couple of articles in our UFC 173 coverage that I forgot to include in the tally. However, even with these pieces added, Bellator 120 still wins out. Bellator 120′s coverage, on the whole, received 11% more traffic than UFC 173′s.

Other random insights:

The time spent on page, an important and overlooked metric, was “virtually identical” for both Bellator 120 and UFC 173. Referral sources, too, were identical, with much of the traffic coming from search (Google) and social (Facebook and a bit from Twitter). This isn’t terribly surprising.

What does all of this mean, then?

At a glance, people are probably saying “The best Bellator has to offer only barely edges out a lower-level UFC card!” And that’s fair to an extent. But it’s worth noting that before the card, most of our UFC 173-related content wasn’t doing too well. There was very little hype around the event. Fans had a “how dare the UFC charge us for this crap” attitude about it. Even the live-blog was sub-par during the event. Once it was updated to reflect the huge upset that was TJ Dillashaw defeating Renan Barao, however, traffic on it exploded. The massive upset could’ve definitely helped UFC 173.

However, the same could be said for Bellator 120 since Will Brooks and Tito Ortiz upset Michael Chandler and Alexander Shlemenko, respectively. King Mo calling Bjorn Rebney a dick-rider didn’t hurt Bellator traffic either.

Alas, web traffic means little in terms of PPV buys. It’s highly likely that many people who read our post-fight Bellator coverage wanted to see if the event was a train wreck without having to pay for it. Furthermore, we’re just one website. A sample size of one isn’t much to go on. When asked on Twitter, some sites reported that their Bellator 120 traffic was far below expectations.

So, to get a clearer picture, we ran a Google trends comparison:

Interestingly, the search term “Bellator 120″ peaked the day after the PPV, indicating our theory above about most of the traffic coming from people who didn’t watch the PPV. And UFC 173′s peak was slightly higher than Bellator 120′s.

If anything is to be taken from this, it’s that Bellator is capable of generating at least as much Internet-interest (even if it derives from schadenfreude) from the fans as the UFC. Whether that’ll hold true for their future PPV outings is impossible to tell.

Marlon Sandro Blames Renan Barao Loss on UFC, Calls UFC 173 Bout an ‘Injustice’

Some are calling TJ Dillashaw’s victory over Renan Barao at UFC 173 the biggest upset in UFC history. Others are chalking it up as simply an off night for the Brazilian. Marlon Sandro, on the other hand, believes there were greater forces at…

An 8-to-1 underdog, Dillashaw entered the cage on Saturday night as nothing but “Scooby snacks” for the UFC’s bantamweight lion. Barao was arguably the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world riding an otherworldly streak of 32 wins and a no contest.

Not even the greatest psychic in the West could have predicted what would unfold on Memorial Day weekend at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

After cracking Barao early with a big overhand right, Dillashaw left any notion of serendipity in the dust by tactfully picking the champ apart on the feet for five rounds. There was hardly walking space due to the many jaws left hanging on the floor as Dillashaw landed a massive left hook followed by ground strikes to net a TKO stoppage at 2:26 of the fifth round.

A bloodied and battered Barao could do little more than pick up the pieces of his shattered world-beater image and head back to the locker room.

Sandro, Barao’s teammate, appeared disgusted by the outcome of the UFC 173 main event. In a post on Instagram, the former Sengoku featherweight champ pointed the finger at UFC scheduling as the sole reason for Barao being upended.

Tenho certeza que você vai voltar mais forte irmão, farei o que for preciso pra você pegar o que e seu de novo. Tremenda sacanagem que fizeram com você acabou de defender o cinturão e nem deu tempo de você descansar e te obrigaram a lutar cambada de safados isso e injustiça , mas Deus não dorme vamos voltar mais forte !!!

I’m sure you will come back stronger brother, will do whatever it takes to take what you and your back. Tremendous romp that you just did to defend the belt and you do not have time to rest and forced you to fight this bunch of crooks and injustice, but God does not sleep we come back stronger!

It appears as if Sandro attempted to use Google translate to transfer his words over to the English language. A source was able to provide Bleacher Report with a clearer translation of Sandro’s post on Monday.

I’m sure that you will come back stronger brother. I’m going to do what I can for you to get back what is yours. Not fair on you, you just defended your belt, there was not enough time to rest and they made you fight again. Bunch of silly people, this is injustice. But god doesn’t sleep, we will come back stronger.

Sandro is obviously alluding to the quick turnaround for Barao after just defending the UFC title against Urijah Faber in February.

Barao, who was rumored to have had a difficult weight cut, came out flat against Dillashaw. He had already slowed down considerably just two rounds into the fight.

But credit has to be given to that overhand right Dillashaw landed in the first round. It seemed like Barao was never able to recover from that one punch.

In the coming weeks, the MMA world may come to realize that the UFC bantamweight title bout propagated more questions than answers.

Did we see the best Renan Barao at UFC 173? Was this fight TJ Dillashaw’s coming out party, or did he merely catch Barao on an off night? Would a rematch play out the same way?

According to MMAFighting.com, Barao’s coach, Andre Pederneiras, recently made an appearance on the Brazilian radio show Mundo da Luta, where he asked the UFC for an immediate rematch at UFC 179 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

While UFC President Dana White wouldn’t harp on specifics, he did tell media members at the post-fight scrum that he wasn’t opposed to doing an immediate rematch.

“I’d want to see this rematch. Hell yeah, I’d want to see it. I want to see which Barao shows up for the next fight, and I think that’s a great fight,” said White.

Jordy McElroy is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA writer for Rocktagon. Translated by Ronaldo Da Silva Lima.

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Renan Barao Doesn’t Deserve Immediate Rematch with T.J. Dillashaw

T.J. Dillashaw’s championship win over Renan Barao at UFC 173 created all sorts of interesting subplots around the UFC bantamweight championship.
Dillashaw has no shortage of contenders for his shiny new belt, which he’ll take back to Sacra…

T.J. Dillashaw’s championship win over Renan Barao at UFC 173 created all sorts of interesting subplots around the UFC bantamweight championship.

Dillashaw has no shortage of contenders for his shiny new belt, which he’ll take back to Sacramento on Monday when he leaves Las Vegas. The most prominent of these is Raphael Assuncao, who scored a razor-thin split decision over the new champion last October in Brazil. Assuncao was originally the man in line to face Barao, but an injury suffered in training prevented him from accepting the fight. Dillashaw got the nod, and the rest is history.

If Dillashaw had his way, Assuncao would be the next man standing across the Octagon. “I’d like to get my win back, yeah,” the new champion said at the UFC 173 post-fight press conference. The loss to Assuncao is one that eats away at the new champion, and likely will until he gets a chance to redeem himself.

If something happens to Assuncao, there are other options. Dominick Cruz is slowly working his way back from the longest injury hiatus in the history of mixed martial arts. The mere thought of Dillashaw and Cruz dancing around the Octagon, with all the angles and footwork and speed that would be on display, is enough to send shivers down the spine of any self-respecting fight fan. They are kindred spirits who have much in common, both in style and substance.

Takeya Mizugaki waits in the wings. He was originally scheduled to face Dillashaw in this event, but was left to face and beat Francisco Rivera when Dillashaw answered the championship call from Sean Shelby. Mizugaki has five wins in a row, but probably still needs another win. Still, he’d do in a pinch.

And there is a small subset of fans who believe Barao, the dethroned champion, deserves an immediate rematch. To them, I say nay! Barao will be in the title picture again, and soon, but the idea of giving him an immediate shot at Dillashaw after what transpired at UFC 173 is ludicrous.

I am fine with rematches of championship fights, but only in specific situations.

A rematch should be granted when a long-time champion loses his belt

Anderson Silva is a perfect example; he held the belt for nearly seven years before losing to Chris Weidman. That is an extensive track record of excellence, and it rightly earned Silva an immediate rematch.

Barao has been the “official” bantamweight champion since February. Most have considered him the real champion since he captured the interim belt in 2012, because we had no idea if Cruz would ever return to unify the belts. Still, even if you count the interim title reign, Barao has been champion for less than two years. He defended the title three times before losing to Dillashaw. That’s not remotely comparable to Silva’s track record.

A rematch should be granted if it’s a close fight, if there is a poor judging decision or the ending is a fluke

Here, you can point to Silva again. His first loss to Weidman could be blamed on Silva’s decision to showboat. Or the rematch between Frankie Edgar and B.J. Penn, which came about because Edgar was awarded a questionable decision during their first fight. Or Edgar vs. Benson Henderson, where Henderson won a questionable decision of his own in the first fight.

Dillashaw vs. Barao was not questionable. Dillashaw won all five rounds and finished Barao emphatically in the final frame. Many of us gave Dillashaw a 10-8 first round. It was not close, not ever, and there was no controversy.

I was told early last week that Barao was undergoing a bad weight cut. At a media gathering on Thursday, he looked drawn and pale. Many will point to that weight cut as a reason why the “real” Barao didn’t show up on Saturday night, and they might be right.

But a weight cut is within Barao’s control. It is not the same as suffering a knee injury and moving forward with the fight to help the UFC out of a bind. It is Barao’s choice to walk around significantly bigger than even teammate Jose Aldo, who fights in a weight class 10 pounds heavier than Barao.

Barao is not deserving of an immediate rematch. He was overwhelmed and dominated. There was no fluke and no bad decision, and Barao hasn’t built up the kind of years-long title reign that makes him deserving of an immediate return fight. He shouldn’t go to the back of the line, of course. He needs to win just one fight, and then he can step back in the cage with Dillashaw.

But there is simply no reason for Barao to leapfrog Assuncao, who has earned his shot and deserves his opportunity.

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TJ Dillashaw’s Win over Renan Barao Leaves Jose Aldo as the Only Brazilian Champ

TJ Dillashaw dethroned former bantamweight champion Renan Barao at UFC 173, and just like that, Jose Aldo became the last UFC champion waving the Brazilian flag.
If we go back less than two years to July 2012, there were four Brazilian champions …

TJ Dillashaw dethroned former bantamweight champion Renan Barao at UFC 173, and just like that, Jose Aldo became the last UFC champion waving the Brazilian flag.

If we go back less than two years to July 2012, there were four Brazilian champions in eight divisions.

Junior dos Santos ruled the heavyweight division, Anderson “The Spider” Silva was still the greatest fighter in the world at middleweight and Jose Aldo and Renan Barao stood tall above the rest of the featherweight and bantamweight divisions, respectively.

Dos Santos was the first to lose his strap.

In December 2012, dos Santos was battered for five rounds by Cain Velasquez at UFC 155. He would challenge Velasquez again at UFC 166 in October 2013, but the Brazilian would come up even shorter this time around, getting stopped in the fight’s final frame.

Between those two heavyweight title fights, Silva was famously knocked out by Chris Weidman at UFC 162. It was a win that nobody saw coming—not like that, at least—and it prompted an immediate rematch.

Like dos Santos, Silva would fail in his second bid at regaining the title.

That left only Barao and Aldo, and neither man looked remotely vincible during his run as champion. These two guys were here to stay.

Barao hadn’t lost in nine years going into his UFC 173 showdown with Dillashaw, and even though the Team Alpha Male product had looked good during his UFC career, he didn’t appear to be the man to defeat the inhuman Barao.

Dillashaw had good wrestling and knockout power, so what? The Brazilian had already defeated arguably the hardest puncher in the division in Michael McDonald via submission, and he dispatched one of the division’s finest grapplers and Dillashaw‘s teammate, Urijah Faber, twice, each time with little effort.

What did Dillashaw have to offer that Barao hadn’t already seen?

At UFC 173, we found out.

Dillashaw had a perfect game plan, complex footwork, huge power and the will to succeed. It was too much for Barao to handle, and Dillashaw finished the fight via TKO in the fifth round.

The win was shocking, and it was equal parts devastating for Brazilian fans, as an American once again snagged one of their coveted titles.

MMA is an undeniably volatile sport, and in just two years, Brazilians went from owning half of the UFC titles to owning just one out of eight (12.5 percent of them for you math people out there).

And now Jose Aldo, the last Brazilian standing, is booked to fight another Team Alpha Male product in Chad Mendes at UFC 176 in August.

Like Dillashaw, Mendes boasts huge knockout power and incredible athleticism. “Money” is, in many ways, a featherweight version of Dillashaw. We haven’t seen the kind of footwork Dillashaw showed against Barao from Mendes, but then again, we hadn’t seen it look that good from Dillashaw himself until he fought for the title.

There’s no telling how much Mendes has improved since his last fight, and there’s no doubt that he presents a significant challenge to Aldo as they head toward their much-anticipated rematch.

Aldo won the first fight via knockout in Round 1, but Mendes has won five straight since that time, scoring a knockout in four of them.

If Aldo is not on top of his game, Mendes‘ streak might get pushed to six, and Brazil will lose its last titleholder.

My, how things can change in this sport.

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Renan Barao’s Coach Wants Immediate Rematch with Dillashaw in Brazil

Renan Barao’s head coach, Andre Pederneiras, wants an immediate rematch with TJ Dillashaw…in Brazil.
According to MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz, the Nova Uniao trainer and coach recently appeared on the radio show No Mundo da Luta, where he sai…

Renan Barao‘s head coach, Andre Pederneiras, wants an immediate rematch with TJ Dillashaw…in Brazil.

According to MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz, the Nova Uniao trainer and coach recently appeared on the radio show No Mundo da Luta, where he said that he’s targeting a second scrap with the newly minted bantamweight king at UFC 179 in Rio de Janeiro.

We’re asking for an immediate rematch. It’s fair, and we’re looking a way to do it…It can’t happen in less than five or six months, but I think that’s how long T.J. is going to be out. Everybody wants to see another fight between them, since it was the fight of the night.

Pederneiras even did his part to hype the rematch on air, questioning Dillashaw‘s manhood and not-so-subtly inferring that the new champ would be afraid to take this hypothetical fight.

“Let’s see (if) these guys are man enough to fight Barao in his house,” Pederneiras said.

Even in the sport of MMA, where illogical fights are booked so long as they can generate some interest, this makes no sense.

For starters, Dillashaw demolished Barao from the first second of the first round until the finish in the fifth round, a one-sided massacre unlike anything we’ve seen from a challenger since Cain Velasquez dethroned Junior dos Santos at UFC 155.

This was not a fluke victory or an early one-punch knockout; this was Dillashaw completely outclassing the champion wherever the fight went.

Barao should not receive an immediate rematch just because he’s Renan Barao. If he had stood toe-to-toe with Dillashaw and dropped a controversial split decision, then we can talk. As it is, though, Barao owns no claim to a rematch after his performance at UFC 173.

Secondly, why Brazil? Why should the champion feel the need to prove his manliness by fighting in the challenger’s home country? You lose badly and then ask for a rematch on your home turf?

As fun and wild as it would be, that makes no sense.

Finally, we have Raphael Assuncao, the Brazilian bantamweight stud who had to decline the fight with Barao at UFC 173 due to injury.

Dillashaw was not even supposed to fight for the title; that was Assuncao‘s fight to take. The injury bug is a feisty beast, though, and Assuncao politely turned down his shot at the 135-pound strap, gifting Dillashaw the opportunity of a lifetime.

For his part, Assuncao is on a six-fight winning streak, and he’s the last man to defeat Dillashaw inside the Octagon, doing so by split decision in October 2013 at UFC Fight Night: Maia vs. Shields.

He’s obviously next in line, and the rematch injects a nice dose of intrigue to the future showdown.

Oh, and Assuncao probably shouldn’t expect to receive this fight in Brazil.

That’s just not how it works.

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Will UFC 173 Force the UFC to Learn Its Lesson About Promoting Fighters?

(Photo via Getty)

By Matt Saccaro

Regarding Renan Barao and the bantamweight division, the UFC had a promotion problem. Barao was one of the sport’s greatest fighters, yet he couldn’t fill a bar showing the PPV if they gave away free food and free beer.

Fans didn’t care about Barao, and there was nothing the UFC could do to change that. While Barao’s inability to speak English, rugged ~~good~~ looks, and total apathy regarding the salesman part of being a prize fighter certainly didn’t make promoting him easy, building Barao was still the UFC’s job. And they continuously failed.

MMA Junkie’s Ben Fowlkes analyzed this issue in the days before UFC 173 [Editor’s note: Hilariously, Dana White grilled Fowlkes for the article but admitted to not reading it…]:

(Photo via Getty)

By Matt Saccaro

The UFC had a promotion problem with Renan Barao. He was one of the sport’s greatest fighters, yet he couldn’t fill a bar showing the PPV if they gave away free food and free beer.

Fans didn’t care about Barao, and there was nothing the UFC could do to change that. While Barao’s inability to speak English, rugged ~~good~~ looks, and total apathy regarding the salesman aspect of being a prize fighter certainly didn’t make promoting him easy, building Barao was still the UFC’s job. And they continuously failed.

MMA Junkie’s Ben Fowlkes analyzed this issue in the days before UFC 173 [Editor’s note: Hilariously, Dana White grilled Fowlkes for the article but admitted to not reading it…]:

First Barao was a “monster.” Then he was a “killer.” Now he’s “the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world,” according to White, and just in case you aren’t buying that, he’ll go ahead and bury you with stats. Because nothing gets fans fired up for a title fight quite like math.

It’s hard to blame the UFC too much. On paper, Barao should be a superstar. His unbeaten streak is legitimately impressive, even if the first few years of it came against regional nobodies, and even if White apparently felt the need to fudge some of those numbers when touting Barao’s stats (“The kid hasn’t lost a fight in 35 fights,” said White, which isn’t exactly true, since Barao is 32-1 according to Sherdog and 28-1 according to MMA.tv).

But if Barao’s struggle to go big time tells us anything, it might be that skill doesn’t sell as much as we’d like to pretend it does. Not by itself, anyway. Not if it comes wrapped up in the package of a 135-pound fighter who doesn’t speak much English, doesn’t have much in the way of an identifiable personality, and – let’s just be real here – looks a little bit goofy.

Leading up to UFC 173, The Washington Post ran a story about the UFC. Renan Barao’s name wasn’t mentioned once. Instead, the article was a thinly veiled hagiography of Dana White. The Renan Barao situation, in addition to the above, was also the result of promoting the brand and the figurehead over the fighters. The question most casual fans asked during fight week was “Who the fuck is Renan Barao?”

Furthermore, the “this guy is a pound-for-pound monster, buy our shit” line has been trotted out far too often lately. According to MMA Owl’s Mike Fagan, Dana White—and the UFC’s promotional efforts by extension—have touted as many as five pound-for-pound kings in the last year. Exaggerations lose selling power as they become more common.

But the UFC got lucky last night. Instead of a champion with zero marketability thanks to the language barrier and a lemur-like face, the UFC now has TJ Dillashaw to work with—a conventionally attractive American who won the title via complete domination. Hopefully the UFC has learned its lesson, and will promote Dillashaw as something other than a great fighter, because it has been proven time and time again that greatness alone doesn’t sell.