The initial pay-per-view estimate for UFC 235 is now in and suggests that between 520,000 and 650,000 people bought the event.
That’s the word according to The Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer, and if true it would likely make it the fifth best selling PPV for the company since 2017.
It would also exceed initially expectations that it would do in the region of 350,000 – 400,000 buys, and that’s perhaps partly due to underestimating Jon Jones’ drawing power.
After all, three of those top 5 selling PPV’s in the past couple of years have now been headlined by Jones, with his UFC 232 fight with Alexander Gustafsson having done 700,000 buys, while his rematch with Daniel Cormier at UFC 214 did 860,000.
Of course there was far more pre-fight interest in those two match-ups, which had intense rivalries and back-stories attached to them – something that UFC 235’s fight with Anthony Smith lacked.
UFC 235 did have a second title featuring Tyron Woodley Vs Kamaru Usman as well though, while Ben Askren’s debut against Robbie Lawler helped make this a card with strength in depth.
However, another potential factor in helping the PPV numbers could have been the fact the prelims aired on ESPN, with a solid line-up there headlined by Zabit Magomedsharipov Vs Jeremy Stephens helping pull in a healthy 1.4 million viewers.
Jon Jones has indicated he wants to fight several more times this year and it’ll be interesting to see if he can keep this PPV sales momentum going during that period.
