MMA Payout has been playing around with different ways to calculate the top draws in the UFC. They've hit on a method that I think reveals something interesting. They take Derek Jenkins' list of the top 10 draws in the UFC that appeared on Yahoo! and compare cards featuring those fighters to cards lacking any of the top 10 draws. 

Here's their chart:

Average buys for all UFC PPVs since 2008 that do not feature ANY of the ten fighters:  308,000

Events not featuring any of the ten fighters:

• UFC 85 (Hughes vs. Alves)                            - 215,000 buys
• UFC 93 (Franklin vs. Henderson)               - 350,000 buys
• UFC 99 (Franklin vs. W. Silva)                     - 360,000 buys
• UFC 103 (Franklin vs. Belfort)                     - 375,000 buys
• UFC 110 (Nogueira vs. Velasquez)            - 240,000 buys

Fighter	Average PPV buys for cards featuring fighter	Difference from "baseline" average
Brock Lesnar	1,007,000	699,000
Georges St. Pierre	889,000	581,000
Quinton Jackson	735,000	427,000
Rashad Evans	693,000	385,000
Forrest Griffin	691,000	383,000
Lyoto Machida	610,000	302,000
BJ Penn	603,000	295,000
Randy Couture	573,000	265,000
Chuck Liddell	550,000	242,000
Anderson Silva	530,000	222,000

*Note that I've reordered the chart so that it lists the fighters from first to last in terms of "Difference from 'baseline' average".

No really big surprises here, but it's interesting to see how much of a bump Brock Lesnar and GSP bring to the PPV business. I think it's obvious that Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and Rashad Evans are benefiting greatly from the mega-success of UFC 114 which may be a one-time event.

Lyoto Machida is another who performs stronger than I might have expected, but now that he's lost his light heavyweight title and his aura of invincibility, I doubt he'll remain a major draw. 

Note also that Anderson Silva is at the bottom of this list. He remains only slightly more popular than Rich Franklin, the champ he deposed from the MW division.