Despite the event having a solid main card and a light heavyweight title bout in the main event, people were not invested in watching the prelims for UFC 210. The viewership numbers for the event are in. The prelims, which were headlined by Kamaru Usman vs. Sean Strickland, drew 723,000, which is down from UFC
Despite the event having a solid main card and a light heavyweight title bout in the main event, people were not invested in watching the prelims for UFC 210. The viewership numbers for the event are in. The prelims, which were headlined by Kamaru Usman vs. Sean Strickland, drew 723,000, which is down from UFC 209 prelims that 1,033 million viewers.
UFC 210 took place on Saturday, April 8, 2017 at the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York. The prelims aired on UFC Fight Pass with four bouts at 6 p.m. ET and on FOX Sports 1 with four bouts at 8 p.m. ET. The main card aired on PPV at 10 p.m. ET with five bouts.
The pre-fight show drew 268,000 while the viewership numbers for the post-fight show were not made available and did not rank in the 150 shows on cable. The weigh-ins also did not rank in the top 150 shows on cable.
With the post-fight show not doing good numbers is a not a good sign for PPV buys as that meant that a lot of people were not interested enough to hang out and catch the results/highlights of the actual PPV main card after the event aired. Usually when a PPV event does a good/great PPV buyrate, then the prelims and the post-fight show does good viewership numbers.
The UFC returns to FOX Sports 1 this weekend with UFC on FOX 24 this Saturday at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Missouri. The UFC Fight Pass prelims begins at 4:30 p.m. ET with five bouts then continues on FOX at 6 p.m. ET with four bouts. The main card airs at 8 p.m. ET with four bouts. A UFC Flyweight Championship match between current champion Demetrious Johnson and Wilson Reis will headline this event.
Jon Anik called the UFC 210 co-main event between Gegard Mousasi and Chris Weidman this past Saturday night. And after hearing from others, Anik now believes that the former UFC champion has a legitimate beef with the New York Athletic Commission. Mousasi was declared the winner over Weidman after landing a knee that appeared to […]
Jon Anik called the UFC 210 co-main event between Gegard Mousasi and Chris Weidman this past Saturday night. And after hearing from others, Anik now believes that the former UFC champion has a legitimate beef with the New York Athletic Commission. Mousasi was declared the winner over Weidman after landing a knee that appeared to […]
UFC 210 this past Saturday was a relative disaster for the NYSAC with Daniel Cormier possibly gaming the system to make weight for his title defense against Anthony Johnson as well as Pearl Gonzalez being removed from her bout for about 10 minutes. The biggest mishap happened the co-main event fight between Gegard Mousasi and
UFC 210 this past Saturday was a relative disaster for the NYSAC with Daniel Cormier possibly gaming the system to make weight for his title defense against Anthony Johnson as well as Pearl Gonzalez being removed from her bout for about 10 minutes. The biggest mishap happened the co-main event fight between Gegard Mousasi and Chris Weidman. As seen in the second round of the fight, Mousasi landed a pair of legal knees on Weidman which Dan Miragliotta said were illegal. Miragliotta then changed his mind after John McCarthy viewed the replay, resulting in Miragliotta attempting to restart the fight only to have the ringside physicians stop the bout, giving Mousasi an extremely controversial TKO win. This was a hot topic coming out of this event and UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping let everyone know his thoughts about it during Monday’s edition of his podcast, Believe You Me. Bisping blamed the entire snafu on Weidman, saying that the former middleweight champion was trying to game the system.
“The real talking point isn’t whether or not they were sloppy and how s**t Mousasi’s takedown defense was and, yet again, how sloppy Chris’s striking is. The controversy and the talking point is the end of the fight”, Bisping said (transcript courtesy of MMA Fighting). “Weidman went in for yet another telegraphed takedown attempt, Mousasi kind of sprawled, kind of had him in a headlock position and from here, Chris tried to manipulate the rules. . . If a person has one hand on the floor, in the past that was a downed opponent. What people used to do was, they used to touch the floor with that hand and then they couldn’t be kneed in the face, when realistically, they didn’t need to put that hand on the floor, they were totally manipulating the rules so they couldn’t be kneed.
“At a weigh in, you try to make weight any way you can. At a fight, you’re supposed to be a man and f**king fight, not manipulate the rules and put one hand on the ground or two hands on the ground. Be a man, stand up, fight, go out there, tooth and nail, bite down on your mouthpiece and lets f**king do this.”
If you thought Bisping would stop there, then you would be wrong as the champion went on to say that not only was Weidman “playing the game” he was also hamming up his injury to try and earn the disqualification win.
“Chris Weidman has only got himself to blame for that fight being finished. . . It appeared, initially, that it was two illegal strikes. So Weidman thought he had five minutes. But come on man, talk about an Oscar winning performance. He was laying it on thick. He thought he had five minutes, but he was rolling around on the floor, clutching his head, [saying] ‘Uhhhhhh.’ He was putting on a real performance here. He even rolled back from being on his knees on his backside. Because he was acting so hurt and so injured, the commission said no, you’re not continuing to fight so they called it a TKO. I don’t know if that was the right decision, but Weidman was trying to win via a disqualification or, at the very most, trying to get a point deducted from Mousasi.”
Bisping brought up his fight with Anderson Silva and how Silva landed a jumping knee at the end of the third round that seriously hurt him. This led to Silva jumping on top of the cage to celebrate, but he was then informed that the fight had not been stopped. Bisping went on to recover from the knockdown and win a unanimous decision. According to Bisping, Weidman handled the situation on Saturday, saying that the former champion was being “a little b**ch.”
“At the end of the day, when those knees were delivered – and they were legal knees, we know that with the benefit of slo-mo replay – Weidman put on a performance. He rolled around on the floor. He clutched his head like a six year old that bangs his head and wants a Band-Aid from his mommy! He was holding his head like a little kid! ‘Uhhh, mommy, mommy, I’ve hurt my head.’ And then he tumbles back onto his backside, and he’s rolling around on the floor looking so sorry for himself. I fought Anderson Silva, at the end of the third round my mouthpiece came out, he dives up in the air, knees me in the face, opens stitches all over my face – I needed about 20 stitches in my face – I’m on the floor, as he kneed me, the buzzer went. Did I roll around on the floor going ‘mummy, mummy, please help.’ No! I got up, wiped the blood off my face, stuck my mouthpiece in, took a breath, had a sip of water, then went back out and fought. I didn’t roll around like a little b**ch on the floor hoping that the commission would give me a win by default. That’s what he did!
“Just like Daniel Cormier tried to manipulate his weight with that towel, Chris Weidman tried to manipulate the outcome of that fight due to that legal knee. “
Daniel Cormier insists he didn’t even know he was holding the towel when he weighed in the second time for his UFC 210 win over Anthony Johnson at UFC 210 last Saturday (April 8, 2017) from Buffalo, but “Rumble’s” team isn’t buying it. Just as Cormier was downplaying the controversy where he lost 1.2 pounds
Daniel Cormier insists he didn’t even know he was holding the towel when he weighed in the second time for his UFC 210 win over Anthony Johnson at UFC 210 last Saturday (April 8, 2017) from Buffalo, but “Rumble’s” team isn’t buying it.
Just as Cormier was downplaying the controversy where he lost 1.2 pounds in a shocking two-and-a-half minutes last Friday to Ariel Helwani, Johnson’s manager Ali Abdelaziz was telling ESPN that they will file a formal complaint about the incident:
“Anthony’s rights were violated. We will go through the proper legal channels to fix this. Everybody saw what happened. How do you lose 1.2 pounds in two minutes?”
According to Abdelaziz, Johnson deserves 20 percent of Cormier’s purse because while he may have made weight in the two extra hours allowed to him in New York, it did not appear that he did in such a short amount of time:
“We don’t want to take anything away from [Cormier], he earned that win,” Abdelaziz said. “But [Cormier] needs to give up 20 percent of his purse to Anthony. He had two extra hours to cut the weight and I think he probably would have made it — but as it happened, I don’t think he made weight.”
And even though Johnson retired after the second loss to Cormier, his manager is steadfast in that the New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC), which just began regulating MMA events last year, does not deserve a pass for allowing it to happen and would consider a lawsuit to seek justice for his client:
“Whatever it takes. I understand New York is new to regulating mixed martial arts, but they’ve been doing boxing for a long time. Everybody is trying to sweep this under the rug but it’s not going to happen.”
UFC light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier may have secured his second title defense with a second-round submission over Anthony Johnson in the main event of last Saturday’s (April 8, 2017) UFC 210 from the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York, but first, he had to deal with some controversy. That controversy came at last Friday’s early
UFC light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier may have secured his second title defense with a second-round submission over Anthony Johnson in the main event of last Saturday’s (April 8, 2017) UFC 210 from the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York, but first, he had to deal with some controversy.
That controversy came at last Friday’s early weigh-ins, where Cormier missed the division’s 205-pound title fight limit on his first attempt by weighing in at 206.2 pounds. He then returned roughly two-and-a-half minutes later to weigh in at 205 pounds, but several onlookers accused him of cheating the system with an old wrestling trick and holding onto the towel that hid his naked body while weighing in.
However, the champ insists he didn’t even know he was doing that, telling Ariel Helwani on today’s episode of ‘The MMA Hour’ that he was simply exhausted from the “hardest weight cut of his career”:
“When I got off the scale the first time, I walked away, and they didn’t cover me,” Cormier said. “So obviously, a guy thinks that he’s losing everything that he’s worked for on the scale, and we just walk back off the scale and nobody even worried about protecting me. So I was like, you know what, I’m going to hold the towel a little bit myself to make sure that I’m covered.
“Now, the reality is, I didn’t even realize I was doing that until I saw pictures, honestly. I’ve got to be completely honest with you, I didn’t even realize I was doing that. I was tired. I was very discouraged and upset because of after that had just happened, so I didn’t even realize that I was doing it.”
Cormier went on to describe issues that not only he and his team but also Johnson’s team experienced with weight management before the pivotal championship bout. The champ revealed Johnson’s coach said their fighter had worked out extensively and hardly lost an weight according to the scale, yet he ultimately came in at an odd number of 203.8 pounds, 1.2 pounds under the title fight limit.
What makes it significant is that Cormier was over by that exact amount, leading to speculation that the scale had some sort of issue involving the 1.2 pound amount. The champion made sure to let his fans (and his haters) know he wasn’t the only one with a close call at UFC 210:
“Honestly, man, my team was standing with Anthony’s team in the back and they spoke to a couple of his coaches, and they said he been working out and not losing weight,” Cormier said. “They said that ‘Rumble’ had worked out for like an hour-and-a-half and lost .8 pounds, and they were thinking, ‘this dude ain’t going to make weight either.’ Then he goes in and he’s the exact amount of weight under as I was the second time I stepped on the scale.
“So I don’t know what was happening with that scale, but yeah, they were concerned that he wasn’t going to (make it). He said it himself. He’s like, ‘man, I was in the same situation as you,’ so obviously we both had some issues with our scales, or the commission had a scale issue. I don’t know.”
Well, who the hell saw that coming? In one of the more baffling performances I’ve had the pleasure of seeing, Anthony ‘Rumble’ Johnson decided to implement an interesting game plan in his rematch with Daniel Cormier at UFC 210. Directly after losing in the exact same sequence of movements, Johnson did the unexpected and retired from the sport at the height of his powers. And he wasn’t the only fighter to call it a career. Let’s delve into the fallout of UFC 210.
Well, who the hell saw that coming? In one of the more baffling performances I’ve had the pleasure of seeing, Anthony ‘Rumble’ Johnson decided to implement an interesting game plan in his rematch with Daniel Cormier at UFC 210. Directly after losing in the exact same sequence of movements, Johnson did the unexpected and retired from the sport at the height of his powers. And he wasn’t the only fighter to call it a career. Let’s delve into the fallout of UFC 210.
Patrick Cote decided to retire after giving a decent showing against Thiago Alves. Rather than focus on the performance itself, I thought I’d speak on what I believe Cote has left behind in his wake. Patrick Cote was one of those warriors from a bygone era where boxing and takedown defense made you an elite competitor. Along with Georges St-Pierre, David Loiseau and a handful of others, Cote put Canada on the map. Cote not only evolved with the sport when it was necessary, he proved himself to be a tough out even at the very end. While he may not get the kind of send off other more successful fighters will receive, I’m here to say that Patrick Cote was certainly one of the most entertaining fighters out there that always put on a show and put it on the line. Damn it, now I’m getting all misty.
Back to the violence…
The most entertaining fight on the main card was swiftly followed by the most disappointing. Pearl Gonzalez battled Cynthia Calvillo in a pretty entertaining scrap. Calvillo opened strong with a ton of offense, though Gonzalez did show some good defense with an interesting opened handed right shield which prevented some significant damage on the feet. Once the fight hit the ground however, Calvillo showed once again why she’s such a problem in the grappling arena. A rear naked choke would eventually materialize in the third round. Calvillo is now has two victories in as many appearances and for whatever reason people are already wanting to match her up with strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk. No. Just, no. While Calvillo is certainly talented, she has a ways to go before she’s ready for the champ. Angela Hill should be a nice challenge to see exactly where she’s at.
Chris Weidman and Gegard Mousasi had a pretty entertaining match. That is until the middle of the second frame which saw Mousasi land a knee to Weidman’s head that was potentially illegal. The match would eventually end with Mousasi getting his hand raised but with no real definitive winner. Weidman’s approach of footwork, kicks, and feints masked his takedowns rather well (something I’ll definitely touch upon in another article). Mousasi was effective in the second round rattling off hand combinations that hurt the former champion. A rematch would be the fair thing to do, but during this new era of MMA it’s all about what sells, not necessarily what makes sense.
Last, but not least, Anthony Johnson decided that he’d rather wrestle with the superior wrestler rather than keep the fight at striking distance as he faced off against Daniel Cormier. It was an interesting approach that perhaps could have worked had he used the strategy to through off Cormier throughout the round. Instead, ‘Rumble’ stuck to his guns and kept being fought off. He did land some heat towards the end of the first frame which broke the champ’s nose. It was in the second frame that we saw Johnson wilt as he was taken down by the same single leg-inside trip that he succumbed to the first time he face Cormier. From there it was all de ja vu as Cormier secured the back and sunk in the rear naked choke.
Despite the performance, Anthony Johnson was still able to retire with a level of eloquence and dignity. His retirement was far more surprising than Patrick Cote’s own, especially when you consider that Johnson is still in his prime. Many are trying to suggest that we haven’t seen the last of Anthony Johnson, but in reality I hope it is. A fighter knows when they’re done and if ‘Rumble’ lacks the motivation then what’s the point of getting in their and potentially injuring himself. If his head isn’t in the game then he’s just putting himself in danger. Yeah, he puts himself in danger for a living, but it’s a whole different ball game when you just don’t want to be there anymore.
For my part, I’m thanking Anthony ‘Rumble’ Johnson for the memories. As far as competition goes, he will be missed.
Do you think Anthony Johnson should have retired?
Jonathan Salmon is a writer, martial arts instructor, and geek culture enthusiast. Check out his Twitter and Facebook to keep up with his antics.
