UFC Plans On Spending Even More Money On Aldo – McGregor If ‘Notorious’ Wins At UFC 189

UFC President Dana White has made it no secret that the promotion spent a ton of money on promoting the original main event of Jose Aldo and Conor McGregor at UFC 189 before the fight was changed due to Aldo pulling out.

White stated to MMA Fighting.com that if McGregore beats Chad Mendes tonight at UFC 189 and becomes the interim featherweight champion then they’ll book Aldo vs. McGregor again. The UFC is willing and obviously able to spend another heavy sum of money to promote that fight.

“If [McGregor] beats [Mendes], the Aldo fight is even bigger than it was this time,” White said. “It’s even bigger. And me and Lorenzo have already talked about it. We’re gonna spend even more money than we did this time. We’ve gotta try to top the last commercial and all that sh*t.”

If you recall, the UFC did an eight-city tour several months back to promote the original fight. The tour hit the major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston.

Thanks to McGregor, the event still has a huge buzz around it. Some will say it’s the Conor McGregor show and others will disagree. Either way, the UFC is expecting a record gate of $7.1 million for UFC 189 and pay-per-view buys in the range of 1 million. Some hefty numbers for a promotion that has not seen one million pay-per-view buys in some time.

However, the weigh-ins Friday alone had more than 11,000 packing into MGM Grand, which would make one believe that the event could do some serious business for the top MMA promotion in the world.

UFC 189 takes place on tonight, July 11, 2015, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. This event will be shown on pay-per-view, Fox Sports 1 and UFC Fight Pass.

UFC 189’s main event will be Chad Mendes vs. Conor McGregor for the interim featherweight title while the co-main event will be a welterweight championship between Robbie Lawler (c) and Rory MacDonald.