I’ve got The Ultimate 2009 outselling UFC 100.

MMA has found its niche, and UFC 100 was the top end of that. It was as big a card as could be constructed, and White had months to make it right. By most analyses by MMA fans, he did. For those who aren’t MMA fans don’t know the shit they are talking about, it doesn’t matter.

This isn’t pro wrestling, this is a real sport, so selling a spectacle in Hulk Hogan isn’t a real good analogy… Better fights could be made, bigger contenders could emerge with a couple of wins. The huge draws could draw even more.. and 100’s exposure just adds in more interest to the entire sport..

This isn’t a movie where if you sell millions in one classic show, (like maybe titanic), making another one would ruin things and you’d never ever match the success of the first.. It just doesn’t work that way..

This isn’t the peak of the sport.. Stay tuned, old guys who don’t know anything about MMA. this is just the beginning folks.

WWF was all over TV at that time, if I remember correctly. I think 100 may be the peak until mma has a consistent network presence that will grow the audience tenfold. I think eventually, we could see the UFC selling out a stadium for this type of show. As more and more athletes gravitate to mma, so will fans and so will tv and other media. Look at how it has grown the past few years already. A dozen years from now, what could the audience be for 250? What will happen when the UFC has a truly big mainstream star, that is on tv, movies, magazine covers, etc…?

I also don’t like to guess at what may come, but anyone that doesn’t think that this has the room to explode, is crazy.

and the UFC continues to grow an older and more mature international fanbase. In 10 to 20 years the growth and convergence of these groups could make MMA the #1 sport in the world.

Wait for MMA to go legal in Ontario. The UFC could sell out the 50 000 seat Skydome if tey wanted to.

big four mainstream sports

what are those? Basketball, Baseball, American Football and Boxing?

…I know they are talking about the US, but i think world wide, MMA can be bigger than the NFL.. (i’m not bashing your favorite sport, but) nobody cares about that in other countries..

The world is loves Football(Soccer), Basketball, and boxing.. so MMA being bigger (Globally) than the NFL or MLB in the future isn’t really that farfetched..

Let’s just say that next year at this time, UFC will be even bigger than it is right now.

I work for a pioneer company in the sports industry, and so far only one other guy is into the UFC — he claims he’s been into it for 5 years — yet he doesn’t know who Shane Carwin or Jon Jones is.

I still think the UFC has a long way to go before it hits Mainstream Ave.

A) Not to be resident wrestling nerd…but Mania 3 was what put Hogan over? No…Hogan way over WAAAAAY before then. Mania 3 was just a huge event, but it didn’t really change Hogan’s status beyond “he can slam Andre!” so…I don’t know. Factchecking?

B) The sport could get bigger or it could stall a bit. i think there will still be a little growth before it stalls out, but by stall out I just mean hit a period of slower growth. I’m sorry but at some point things WILL level off a little bit. I, of course, do not want this to be true because the success of this website grows with the sport but reality is that at a certain point the growth will cool. This is not to say it won’t get hot again but look at ANY OTHER SPORT ON EARTH and you will see boom periods and cooling off periods. I don’t think we’re going to be immune to any sort of slow periods in our future.

C) Why are we so obsessed with trying to rank sports and decide which sports we can be bigger than? It’s such a pointless exercise and it only serves to make the sport seem smaller than it really is to hold it up to other sports with long histories and a large amount of cultural currency. Our sport is young and booming…that’s good enough for me. I don’t hold any illusion that we’re heading for the #1 sport in the world…and if we are I’m going to be a very old man before it happens. Don’t look for too much, too fast or you’ll feel disappointed without need.

I definitely agree with the sentiment that trying to rank sports is a bit pointless, and while I’m a huge fan of MMA I don’t really yearn for it to become the most popular sport in the country, (I mean, imagine if fighters were supposed to behave like role models…).

As long as there’s enough money around to tempt people with talent into the sport, and there’s an organization putting on good cards I couldn’t care less if and how MMA’s being covered on CBS or ESPN.