UFC 94 Does Huge Business
by Nate Wilcox on Feb 4, 2009 12:07 PM EST
in MMA News
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From the Las Vegas Sun:
Less than 24 hours before the Super Bowl kicked off in Tampa, Pierre and Penn was plastered all over the front of ESPN’s Web site, arguably America’s top home page for sports fans.
After his dominating victory, St. Pierre was 30 minutes late to the postfight press conference so he could do an interview on “SportsCenter.”
While official numbers have yet to be released, White said he expected UFC 94 to surpass both UFC 91 (Randy Couture-Brock Lesnar) and UFC 92 (The Ultimate 2008) as the top-selling pay-per-view event in the organization’s history, with more than 1.3 million buys (which would top the 1.25 million pay-per-views that the Oscar De La Hoya-Manny Pacquiao “Dream Match” in December generated).
The company’s record of 1.05 million sales came when Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz squared off for the second time at UFC 66 in 2006.
Should Saturday’s attendance number of 14,885 fans at the MGM Grand hold up, the event would become the highest-attended UFC fight in Las Vegas. Not too mention the $4.3 million live gate, would be good for sixth all-time.
“The casino was scrambling to add more seats,” White said. “Other casinos were looking for tickets. This was the craziest event we’ve ever done, by far.”
Adding further proof, the nearly 300,000 people who poured into Las Vegas for Super Bowl weekend had the opportunity to make prop bets for the first time on UFC fighters. One included the number of minutes completed by Penn and St. Pierre against the number of completions by Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. (Throw in MMA female star Gina Carano appearing side-by-side with Bruce Lee in a Pepsi commercial during the Super Bowl and the weekend truly reached out to a new audience like never before).
HT FightOpinion
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Great news for UFC and MMA period. I was wondering where they were doing UFC 100. Vegas again? I mean if they can’t have NY why not go to Staples Center in LA? I know they went there for Hughes/Gracie but MMA has become a much bigger monster since then. That and I wanna see how much vann-damage UFC can do selling it out! :)
Maybe Big John
can make a special UFC comeback since he’s only licensed in Cali. That is, if Dana wants him…
by xFenixKnightx on Feb 4, 2009 12:20 PM EST up reply actions
I thought...
they announced it for Vegas already…but I could be wrong.
Contributing Editor - BloodyElbow.com - SBNation's mixed martial arts headquarters.
by Brent Brookhouse on Feb 4, 2009 12:25 PM EST up reply actions
Dream
shattered. :(
Isn’t Mandalay Bay smaller than MGM? O_o Why would they do that?
by xFenixKnightx on Feb 4, 2009 12:33 PM EST up reply actions
it is smaller
i think 13000, but dont hold me to that. they will probably just put on a mega-show and jack up the ticket prices. it seems they have been able to get away with this so far. as long as the ppv’s dont go up any more.
by bdw on Feb 4, 2009 1:02 PM EST up reply actions
There was some talk about “Vegas fatigue” a while back as well, so it might make sense to scale back the venue a bit.
"I'm AJB and I endorse this nut-puncher."
by AJB on Feb 4, 2009 1:12 PM EST up reply actions
??
I don’t know why but this has raised a question for me. Is this the beginning of a golden age for MMA? or, Is this the beginning of the end and the most mainstream MMA will ever achieve?
"Stop smiling you are about to be punched in the face !"
Be positive – the snowball will only grow.
by Derek Suboticki on Feb 4, 2009 3:21 PM EST up reply actions
i believe that it is the beginning of a “golden era” for this sport. boxing has had several different golden eras, the 40’s and the 80’s to name a few. i think it’s just a small beginning though. obviously it’s huge on the internet, but like everyone says, it hasn’t come close to reaching mainstream status yet. when we see a show like MMA LIVE air live weekly on tv and start hearing more major sports journalists discussing the sport with intelligence, not ignorance, then well know that mma has made it big. i don’t know when that will be, but iv’e got a feeling it’s going to happen within the next couple of years.
I think it will take longer
Its a generational change. Until the mainstream reporters are people who accept MMA as a legit sport it will be kind of out there.
Boxing was a HUGE mass phenomenon from the 1890s on and yet it was only in the 1920s when it started to attract semi-respectable status and mainstream attention.
By the 1940s when Joe Lewis was big, you had an entire generation of sports writers who had grown up with boxing as an accepted sport that’s when it really became epic.
Then the discussion was “Joe Lewis has reached the pinnacle of sporting achievement” rather than “Jack Johnson is a brute and not fit for decent society” .
"the spirit of your average dumbass with overblown rhetoric"
I just hope...
that somewhere down the road I get to sit around with a stogy and a fedora talking about the old days. Yeah…I just want to be Bert Sugar.
Contributing Editor - BloodyElbow.com - SBNation's mixed martial arts headquarters.
by Brent Brookhouse on Feb 4, 2009 1:16 PM EST up reply actions
Jack Johnson, the biggest and baddest boxer of all time. Too bad he liked taking hookers over state lines.
Unforgivable Blackness...
probably my favorite book about a combat athlete ever.
Contributing Editor - BloodyElbow.com - SBNation's mixed martial arts headquarters.
by Brent Brookhouse on Feb 4, 2009 1:17 PM EST up reply actions
UFC 100 is at Mandalay Bay. The reason for this is that Mandalay Bay, although smaller than MGM, is a much better set up for the UFC, both in production areas and in ancilliary areas. The UFC hasn’t had a ppv in California since UFC 76. Part of me wonders if this is in response to the whole handling of the Sean Sherk incident. When he was first popped, UFC 76 was already scheduled and could not be canceled. Since then, they have not been back with the big show. WEC shows aside, I think the UFC was really worried about the CSAC. Just my two cents.
Not just the Sean Sherk incident...
per se, but the situation with CSAC in general. It’s basically been a complete and utter mess since that time, and probably before it, too…it’s just the Sherk issue that brought it’s considerable problems to the forefront.
"Now…put that in your [BLEEP]ing pipe and smoke it." -Hal McRae
by Sweep_the_Leg on Feb 4, 2009 1:53 PM EST up reply actions
Considering that 3 of the past 4 ppv’s have done close to a million or more this is some of the best news the UFC has ever gotten. It’s one thing to have a big one time number like UFC 66 but the have multiple events in a short ammount of time put up those numbers it shows that the UFC is getting bigger and bigger by the event. Who knows what they could have in store for UFC 100 that could be their biggest event ever and keep breaking even more records on ppv.
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