UFC 175 Hits Estimated 500,000 Pay-Per-View Buys
UFC 175 went down this past July fourth weekend, with a duo of title fights at the top of the card; Chris Weidman successfully defended his middleweight title against Lyoto Machida in a thrilling five round affair, and Ronda Rousey made mincemeat of Alexis Davis to retain her women’s bantamweight strap.
Uriah Hall was also featured on the main card, as he overcame the adversity of a gruesome broken toe to win a three rounder over Thiago Santos. Russell Doane and Marcus Brimage rounded off the main card, in a split bout that many felt Brimage should have won. The PPV numbers were estimated to be at 500-540K buys by MMA know-it-all Dave Melzer at MMAFighting.com. In his words:
“It appeared a combination of the two fights that led to the success. While Rousey was the biggest star on the show, her opponent was not well known and given little chance to win. This was also Rousey’s third fight in just over six months. Machida was considered a major test for Weidman’s middleweight title, perhaps his toughest in the division, but the former light heavyweight champion was not a big draw as a challenger when he faced Jon Jones for the light heavyweight title.”
So nowhere near the glory days of super PPVs for the promotion, but by far the biggest draw since Rousey and Weidman co-headlined UFC 168, in December of 2013. The story is that you need big names to promote these types of pay-per-view shows, and the spanner in the works is when UFC Fight Night 46 is one of the biggest events ever, and was streamed for free.
A lot of chatter has focused on 2014 being a rough patch in the UFC’s profit margin, but the inevitable return of Cain Velasquez, Anderson Silva, Nick Diaz, Anthony Pettis, and potentially Georges St-Pierre could put all that to bed. Perhaps a circumstantial dip in popularity is a fitting description for the first half of 2014 in MMA?
