Prior to Saturday night’s UFC 182 event in Las Vegas Dana White made a bold prediction that the event, fueled by the intense rivalry between it’s headline stars Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier, would do 750,000 buys on pay-per-view to start the new year with a bang.
However, in the aftermath of the event he told the assembled media at the post-fight press conference that he may have actually underestimated the interest people had in seeing the two settle their differences in the Octagon.
“The pay-per-view was through the roof,” White stated. “It’s blowing what I said out of the water.”
Having said that, White did clarify that he didn’t believe that it would end up breaking the one million PPV barrier, but confirmed that it would be “more than 750 [thousand]”.
If true, that’s a great start to the UFC’s 2015 campaign after a tough 2014 for the promotion. The only down side is that those who bought the event may not have come away completely satisfied with what they watched with every fight on the main card going to a decision, while the clinch-heavy main event left some disappointed.
For the hardcore fan it was fascinating to see Jones fight Cormier at close quarters and beat the Olympic wrestler at his own game, but for the casual fan tuning in to watch a repeat performance of their now infamous pre-fight brawl in the lobby of the MGM Grand hotel, this battle of wills didn’t live up to expectations.
White will surely now be keeping his fingers crossed that doesn’t put a dent in fans enthusiasm for another huge fight on the horizon between Anderson Silva and Nick Diaz at UFC 183 on January 31st which has the potential to be another major moneyspinner for the promotion and could prove that White was right to recently assure the media that the pay-per-view business is far from dead.
