The UFC’s next big pay-per-view event just received a boost as the promotion announced that April 21st’s UFC 145 show will now feature six live fights instead of the standard five.
That means that a bantamweight bout between former long-time WEC champion Miguel Torres and the extremely promising Michael McDonald will now duke it out on the main card which is headlined by a light-heavyweight title fight between Jon Jones and Rashad Evans.
The new follows a similar move for UFC 144 in Japan which also featured six fights and went on to produce better than anticipated PPV numbers, with around 375,000 people purchasing the event – an improvement on past international shows.
It’s hard to say for sure whether the six-fight card was the reason for the increase in sales, but it certainly didn’t hurt it, and it’s a smart move for UFC 145 as well since outside of the main event it isn’t the strongest line-up we’ve ever seen.
For me the biggest surprise is that Torres and McDonald weren’t on the main card to begin with as this has the makings of a very good fight between two men who are keen to get into the title reckoning at 135lbs.