According to UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta Saturday’s UFC 193 pay-per-view looks to be on course to become the organizations second best-selling pay-per-view event ever.
Fertitta told Yahoo! Sports that it’s already the third biggest of all-time, but with people still buying the historic event to watch the re-run he’s confident it’s trending towards becoming the second biggest ever.
The UFC boss stopped short of naming a figure, but from our research we can establish that would peg it in the region of 1.1 million buys as things stand, not far off second spot.
The current UFC record stands at 1.6 million buys, a hard to beat record that came courtesy of UFC 100 in July 2009 when the promotion stacked a card with a heavyweight title unfication bout between Brock Lesnar and Frank Mir, Georges St. Pierre’s welterweight title defense against Thiago Alves, plus a fight between TUF 9 coaches Dan Henderson and Michael Bisping.
Lesnar also helped UFC 116 in July of 2010 become the second biggest PPV ever with 1,116,000 buys when he returned after a battle with diverticulitis for another heavyweight title unification bout against Shane Carwin.
Closely following behind that are two other events who up to this had shared third spot on the all-time list: UFC 158: GSP Vs Diaz and UFC 168: Weidman Vs Silva II.
To be in that company is a great achievement for UFC 193 which was headlined by two female title fights and it shows just how Rousey’s star power had continued to rise over the past few months since her KO victory against Bethe Correia at UFC 190 which drew around 900,000 buys.
If Rousey had won and gone on to fight Cris ‘Cyborg’ Justino at UFC 200 as the promotion had been targeting then the trend suggests that with the right fights to back it up they could have been on course to rival UFC 100’s long standing PPV record, but Holm has thrown a spanner in the works by dismantling the previously undefeated judoka in the spectacular fashion.
So, now the obvious question is whether Rousey can still retain her drawing power if and when she does come back to rematch Holm?
Judging by the continued level of interest in all things Ronda Rousey over the past few days since her loss, and unrelenting debate about how she would do in a rematch with the division’s new champion, it looks likely that the rematch would again be big business, particularly if they can still time it to take place at UFC 200, though the definitive nature of the beatdown she received on Saturday night may turn some people off.
Either way, what she’s achieved in such a small space of time is remarkable and even if she never fought again she’d still go down in history as one of the UFC’s biggest ever draws alongside Lesnar and St.Pierre.
