The first estimates as to how April’s UFC 197 event did on pay-per-view are now in and show that UFC light heavyweight interim champ Jon Jones still has a ways to go before he’s drawing the kind of numbers enjoyed by the likes of Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey.
According to MMAfighting.com’s Dave Meltzer, UFC 197 is believed to have done in the region of 375,000 – 400,000 buys.
That’s far below the 1.5 million buys that Conor mcGregor is reported to have delivered for his last fight with Nate Diaz at UFC 194 back in December, or the 1.1 million buys that Ronda Rousey produced against Holly Holm at UFC 193 a month earlier.
That being said, it is a better number than any other fighter not named McGregor or Rousey has done over the past 12 months.
Daniel Cormier’s late withdrawal from UFC 197 undoubtedly hurt it’s drawing power as his continued rivalry with Jones had generated considerable interest in the build-up to their fight, after already having produced 800,000 PPV buys for their original encounter at UFC 182 in January of 2015.
Cormier’s replacement, Ovince St. Preux has never been a draw for the promotion, and no-one felt he had a chance of beating Jones, so it was inevitable that less people were going to tune in.
That being said, McGregor’s dealt with late changes in opponents and still drawn big numbers, and Rousey draws a crowd even when she’s faced outmatched fighters like Bethe Correia, so it shows that Jones isn’t naturally a huge draw in his own right.
Nevertheless, the fact that he will now be fighting Cormier at UFC 200 should ensure that his next set of pay-per-view numbers will be far more impressive, though almost certainly not at the record-breaking levels that people were anticipating when McGregor Vs Diaz II sat atop of the line-up.
