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Wild Rumor of the Day: UFC 174 Did Less Than 100,000 Pay-Per-View Buys

(*crickets* / Photo via Getty)

Yesterday, MMAFighting’s Dave Meltzer reported that UFC 173: Barao vs. Dillashaw pulled an estimated 200,000-215,000 pay-per-view buys. While that number is certainly on the low end of UFC buyrates, it’s not a disaster by any means. Keep in mind that UFC 169 — a card that featured a Renan Barao vs. Urijah Faber rematch, Jose Aldo defending his featherweight belt against Ricardo Lamas, and a high-profile heavyweight bout between Alistair Overeem and Frank Mir — only earned an estimated 230,000 buys back in February. On paper, UFC 173 was arguably a weaker offering, but the buyrate wasn’t that far off. Basically, it could have been a lot worse.

The bad news is, last weekend’s UFC 174: Johnson vs. Bagautinov event might have done a historically awful, Bellator-caliber buyrate. First, here’s Meltzer discussing the early estimates in his newsletter yesterday:

“It’s too early to get accurate numbers, but every indication we’ve gotten was very bad, and that it showed a steep decline from UFC 173, which was among the lower numbers of the last eight years. UFC PPV shows usually range from 200,000 to 500,000 Google searches after the event, and are usually in the top few searched for items in the country. A bad show may only do 100,000. Bellator’s show last month hit 100,000. A big show can top 500,000, with the shows that hover around 1 million buys usually doing anywhere from 1 million to 5 million searches. This show did less than 20,000, unheard of for a PPV…

(*crickets* / Photo via Getty)

Unlike UFC 173, which looked weak on paper and everyone knew wasn’t going to draw much, it still had Dan Henderson and Daniel Cormier in the No. 2 spot. They brought some star power in what was really the main event. It also had a lot to talk about after, due to T.J. Dillashaw’s upset win over Renan Barao.

This show didn’t have much interest going in. But most of the time, those type of shows deliver good action. This had none of that. It wasn’t terrible, but there was no fight you needed to see. As a likely sign of how the show went, Dana White didn’t even attend the post-fight press conference.”

In response to Meltzer’s story, our twitter friend @Niko138 added some inside information that suggests the UFC 174 buyrate was beyond dismal. Treat this as a rumor for now, but holy crap:

I’ve heard from a couple of people who would know, that early estimates of 174 buys have it just a bit under 100k. The sole reason I am posting about this (I normally try not to be one of those ratings/buys posters who everyone hates) is because if the show truly did this bad, it will be a good thing for us fans who complain about watered down cards. The UFC’s core audience was really being tested with this card, to see how much they could get away with buys wise, for a card with absolutely no drawing power to the casual viewer.

If this is the case, it sends a strong message to the UFC that the watered down cards are no longer going over with fans. For me, considering the cards are $60 and there is 14 a year…this is great news.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the number that comes out in the press is just above that, like 125…If you see the number come out around that area, then trust me, it did under 100k. This has to piss Dana off to no end considering the Bellator show did do a legit 100k

This is really interesting stuff to me, because like I said.. if true, the UFC is going to realize they can’t keep putting on shows like this as a numbered PPV, and expect its fans to continuously just blindly shell out the cash.

That’s a step in the right direction.. they know they are losing PPV buys, and hopefully they step their game up to fix it, by putting on more big fights per card. We can hope anyway.

So, a couple things. MMAPayout’s PPV Blue Book only dates back to UFC 57 in February 2006, and doesn’t show any UFC pay-per-view doing less than 140k buys. But according to Wikipedia (I know, I know), the last UFC PPV that did under 100k buys was UFC 53: Heavy Hitters, which took in just 90,000 buys in June 2005. In other words, you have to go back nine years to find a UFC PPV that performed as terribly as UFC 174 allegedly did.

My other thought is this: “Putting on more big fights per card” is not necessarily the answer. After years of seeing these UFC buyrates ebb and flow, my totally non-scientific conclusion is that 1) casual UFC fans only care about who’s fighting in the main event, and 2) nobody cares about little flyweights. Seriously. Non-Rousey bantamweight and featherweight title fights have always underperformed on pay-per-view, and it should come as no surprise that the first time the UFC tried to put a flyweight title fight in a pay-per-view main event, it would pull record-low numbers.

So, if the 100k buyrate is accurate — or even close to accurate — it’ll get the UFC’s attention. But don’t expect the promotion to start putting together more stacked PPVs in response; remember they have like 50 events/year to fill out, and they simply don’t have the manpower for it. Instead, the UFC’s major takeaway will probably be this: If we have to put a flyweight title fight on a pay-per-view card, there had better be a bigger fight on top of it.

Alexander Gustafsson to Receive Title Shot With Win Over Gegard Mousasi; Henderson/Machida Remain on UFC’s Pay-No-Mind List

(“I would consider it an honor to fight a great champion like Chael Sonnen. LOL, just kidding.” Photo via Esther Lin/MMAFighting)

Not that reports like this are ever worth a damn, but in accordance with the current mood of UFC President Dana White, Swedish light-heavyweight contender Alexander Gustafsson will receive a title shot if he can beat Gegard Mousasi in the main event of UFC on FUEL TV 9, April 6th in Stockholm.

“If Mousasi beats Gustafsson, he skyrockets right to the top of that division,” White said today in London. “And as far as Gustafsson goes, if he beats Mousasi in that fight, he’s in line for a title shot. This is a big fight for both of those guys.”

This, of course, is an old trick — pumping up a non-title-fight main event by declaring that it has title fight “implications.” But the UFC could very likely stick to their word this time, if for no other reason than to further punish Dan Henderson for his role in sinking UFC 151 and Lyoto Machida for refusing a title shot at UFC 152. Those two poor saps will be playing second-fiddle to a couple of broads in ten days at UFC 157.

Gustafsson has won his last six fights, which ties him for #4 on the list of longest current UFC win streaks. Would a seventh win against Mousasi convince you that he’d be a threat to Bones?

(“I would consider it an honor to fight a great champion like Chael Sonnen. LOL, just kidding.” Photo via Esther Lin/MMAFighting)

Gustafsson has won his last six fights, which ties him for #4 on the list of longest current UFC win streaks. Would a seventh win against Mousasi convince you that he’d be a threat to Bones?

Is Chael Sonnen Calling it Quits?

(Sonnen tries to remain calm while scanning for the nearest exit at the UFC 148 pre-fight press conference.)

How the high and mighty have fallen, Potato Nation.

Just a few days after coming up short (again) against Anderson Silva at UFC 148, the rumors and speculations of what lies in store for middleweight contender Chael Sonnen have already begun to take on a life of its own. And at the forefront of those rumors, is the possibility that we may never see perhaps the greatest fight-hyper in the biz in the octagon again. Now, we aren’t normally quick to buy into retirement rumors that come in the immediate aftermath of a fight, even when they are coming from the fighters themselves. Because, as was the case for B.J. Penn and Jamie Varner, these supposed “retirements” were more or less a way of coping with the frustration that comes with of a string of losses (or in Sonnen’s case, a particularly hard loss to swallow), and were over before most of us compile a “Best of” list for either man. The jury is still out on how long Nick Diaz will hold out, but we’re guessing it will likely coincide with his recent suspension.

But regardless of the semi-thesis statement we’ve just laid before you, the head grappling coach at Xtreme Couture, Neil Melanson, feels that we may have seen the last of Sonnen for now. Melanson took over Sonnen’s UFC 148 training camp after Scott McQuary, Sonnen’s longtime head coach, suffered a heart attack a couple months back, and recently sat down with the ironically-titled Verbal Submission Radio to discuss Sonnen’s future in the sport:

Any time you’re a part of training camp or you’re friends with somebody and they lose, you just worry about them like, how are they gonna handle it mentally? Are they gonna come back from this? You know, I don’t know what Chael’s plans are, but I got a feeling he’s done fighting. I don’t know. I’ve just got a feeling he’s done. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think he was serious when he said, ‘If you beat me, I will leave forever,’ and there’s a very good chance of that.

(Sonnen tries to remain calm while scanning for the nearest exit at the UFC 148 pre-fight press conference.)

How the high and mighty have fallen, Potato Nation.

Any time you’re a part of training camp or you’re friends with somebody and they lose, you just worry about them like, how are they gonna handle it mentally? Are they gonna come back from this? You know, I don’t know what Chael’s plans are, but I got a feeling he’s done fighting. I don’t know. I’ve just got a feeling he’s done. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think he was serious when he said, ‘If you beat me, I will leave forever,’ and there’s a very good chance of that.

Melanson is of course referring to the “loser leaves town” match that Sonnen proposed to Silva at UFC 136, an offer that was later retracted in hilarious fashion.

And as understandable as it is to imagine that Chael would be feeling rather hollow after failing to defeat Silva on two separate occasions, despite performing better than any other challenger has against the champ in the process, I would have to say that this would be a huge mistake on his part. Before any of you jump down my throat with claims that I am a “Sonnen nuthugger” or a “Silva hater” as you are apt to do, know this: I am a fan of both Sonnen and Silva, for entirely different reasons.

Yes, I wanted Silva to win on Saturday night, if only to end the smorgasbord of ridiculous claims that have constituted Sonnen’s career over the past two years, but there is no denying that the Gangster from Oregon is still a threat to everyone in the middleweight division. In both his fights with Silva, Sonnen dominated early and often, only to have a simple mental error lead to his undoing. Surely his spinning backfist attempt at UFC 148 was the more glaring of the two, but Sonnen’s presence in the middleweight division is almost a necessity. And besides, who else can cut a promo as awesome as this? No one, that’s who.

The fact remains that Silva has absolutely decimated all challengers to his throne, and, minus a couple of legit challenges he may face down the line (not you, Mr. Bisping), Sonnen was the only man to, as CrushCo so brilliantly stated, make us believe he could actually beat Silva. And to be fair, there’s a good chance that Sonnen could do so if he stuck to and never deviated from the takedown and GnP oriented offense that saw him dominate Silva in the first round of their fight last Saturday. I place a lot of emphasis on the if.

But according to Melanson, whether or not Sonnen will truly call it quits is a matter of his mental toughness when dealing with such a hard loss:

I never met anyone that had a scenario where it’s like, ‘If I don’t win this then I’m done,’ it never worked out positive for them because, just in my experience, you have to love the grind and if you love the grind, eventually you’ll get what you want because you give up what you need to give up. Apparently Chael had his limit like, ‘This is it, I’ve had enough. If I don’t win this then it’s all not worth it.’ Having lost that, yeah, there’s a very good chance he could pursue other things. He’s a very smart guy, very well spoken. I know, whether he’ll admit to it or not, he has a lot of passion to be a broadcaster of sorts. He seems to excel in any type of speaking arrangement. He loves doing interviews. He loves hyping fights and I’m sure he loves training. He’s a good fighter. He’s a great fighter and he’s an awesome athlete but he can’t fight forever and maybe he’s at a point he’d like to do something else. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong.

Well, if the comments made by the man himself are any indication, Melanson is most certainly wrong. When asked on this very subject by ESPN’s Franklin McNeil, Sonnen declared that:

It’s tough but, unfortunately, it’s not my first athletic defeat. You can’t get down. You can’t get depressed. Every single day you get up, you’ve got to make the most of it.You’ve got to man up sometimes.

Truer words have never been spoken. At least not by Chael P. Sonnen.

So what do you think, Potato Nation? Is Sonnen headed for retirement, destined to be the #2 man at middleweight forevermore, or simply biding his time for yet another run at the title?

–J. Jones

Rumor of the Day: Gunnar Nelson Headed to the UFC

(Nelson becomes the first man ever to successfully narfle the Garthok at the 2009 ADCC Absolute trials.)

Crank up the Bjork and start cubing up the Hakarl, because it appears that Icelandic BJJ phenom and undefeated prospect Gunnar Nelson is headed to the UFC.

The 23 year-old welterweight is undoubtedly one of the hottest prospects outside of the UFC, collecting a perfect 9-0-1 record with just one of those wins making it outside of the first round. Nelson has not been to the scorecards since his debut fight — a draw against John Oleson — and has collected six of his nine stoppage wins by way of submission. FightersOnly were the first to break the news, stating that several close sources had already confirmed this report, though an official announcement from inside Nelson’s camp has yet to be made. There have been several rumors claiming that Nelson was headed to the UFC over the past few years, but this time it seems to be happening for serial.

After acquiring his BJJ black belt in just four years, Nelson first burst onto the MMA scene back in 2007, and gained incredible notoriety in 2009 when he defeated the much larger, multiple-time ADCC medalist and UFC veteran Jeff Monson in the first round of the 2009 ADCC Absolute trials. Nelson most recently scored a first round submission via armbar over Alexander Butenko back in February, his fourth straight to come by way of first round submission.

We know some of you Taters have been clamoring about Nelson for what feels like ages now, so it’s good to know that we might finally be able to see just what this kid is capable of in the near future. As will be the case with Hector Lombard and our buddy Ryan Jimmo, 2012 is looking like it could be a make or break year for prospects outside the UFC.

Lucky for you, CagePotato and Youtube have combined their powers to compile an extensive look at Nelson’s background, which awaits you below.

(Nelson becomes the first man ever to successfully narfle the Garthok at the 2009 ADCC Absolute trials.)

Crank up the Bjork and start cubing up the Hakarl, because it appears that Icelandic BJJ phenom and undefeated prospect Gunnar Nelson is headed to the UFC.

Lucky for you, CagePotato and Youtube have combined their powers to compile an extensive look at Nelson’s background, which awaits you below.

Nelson vs. Driss El Bakara (Nelson’s 2nd Pro Fight)

Nelson vs. Iran Mascarenhas (Nelson’s first KO victory)

Nelson vs. Sam Elsdon (BAMMA 2)

Nelson vs. Eugene Fadiora (BAMMA 4)

Nelson vs. Alexander Betenko

GUNNAR NELSON – A CALM MIND

Learn all you need to know about Nelson’s accolades and more on his website.

–J. Jones

Rumor of the Day: Alexander Gustafsson May Help the UFC Bid Rampage Jackson Farewell Later This Year

(And then it’s back to the glory days.)

Fresh off a unanimous decision win over Thiago Silva at UFC on FUEL 2 in Sweden, rumor has it that Alexander Gustafsson is being looked at as a potential opponent for Quinton Jackson’s much desired swan song with the UFC. No potential date or venue has been mentioned.

Although it was previously reported that Jackson would duke it out with Mauricio Rua in a rematch of their PRIDE Total Elimination 2005 fight, our fanboyish dreams were almost immediately squashed when Page was forced to undergo double knee surgery in the fallout of his UFC 144 decision loss to Ryan Bader.

(And then it’s back to the glory days.)

Sources within FightersOnly have stated that the Zuffa brass were eyeing the winner of the Silva/Gustafsson bout before they even threw down at last weekend’s event. Silva and Rampage were originally supposed to square off at UFC 130, until Silva pissed hot following his UFC 125 scrap with Brandon Vera and was replaced by Matt Hamill. The fight that resulted was disappointing to say the least.

Jon Jones comparisons aside, Gustafsson has been on an absolute tear as of late, and a win over Rampage would do a lot for him in terms of drawing power and marketability. Granted Jackson is nowhere near the fighter he once was, at least not in his last performance, but a win over a former UFC champ would be a huge accomplishment for “The Mauler,” and could put him in line for a title shot in the very near future.

It has also been rumored that Jackson was offered a fight with Phil Davis previously, but turned it down due to his well known hatred of fighting anyone with a ground game whatsoever. This is a former MMA champion, ladies and gentlemen. Though Gustafsson possesses strong enough grappling abilities to give Rampage trouble, he is primarily a striker and could make for one hell of a fight for Jackson to go out on. Not as great as his fight with Shogun would likely have been, but satisfying to some degree.

Then it will be back to the worlds of transsexualism, bestiality, and terrible rap songs for our old friend. Ar-reba-derchi.

-J. Jones