Opinion: Where’s the Buzz?
Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media.
The biggest Ultimate Fighting Championship card of the year is this Saturday night, and it doesn’t feel very big.
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Cormier has only been a little bit above the baseline as a draw, and Jones’ last return, against Ovince St. Preux on short notice, was a disappointment both at the box office and on pay-per-view. Their first fight, while a hit, doing somewhere in the neighborhood of 800,000 buys, was coming off of months of hype following two huge viral videos, one of which was a brawl at a media event. The hatred between the two was palpable and it was everywhere, to the point that when the fight was delayed the first time, Cormier was kept as Jones’ opponent even though he was originally an injury replacement for Alexander Gustafsson.
The second viral video? Raw footage of the two fighters bickering
via satellite during a media day, which was purportedly caught by
someone watching the “wildfeed” at a TV station or somewhere else
with a large satellite dish. The UFC quickly had the clip yanked
from youtube, but it was reposted repeatedly and excerpted by
various news outlets.
All of that buzz? It’s not really here this time. Jones, while he dislikes Cormier, seems more upset that his foe genuinely thinks he’s on steroids than anything else. Cormier isn’t as fiery as before, either, and the heat between the two isn’t what it was in the past. They’re not getting much help, either. Yes, the trailer is the greatest in UFC history, but it aired during UFC 213, which bombed, and the YouTube video of it, while viewed over a million times has not really reached non-hardcore MMA fans. UFC on Fox: Weidman vs. Gastelum, theoretically the TV special that would serve to hard sell the PPV, also bombed, barely beating out the two least-watched of the UFC’s 25 broadcast network specials.
Oh, and there’s also the elephant in the room: The UFC has been spending most of its promotional energy and other resources on pushing the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor boxing card, which the company technically isn’t even part of, even if it clearly has a financial stake in the event. That got the week of live press conferences, a Fox Sports 1 special recounting the highlights, and most of the Dana White soundbites. Not easily the most stacked UFC event available on pay-per-view since UFC 205 last November, headlined by the biggest in-cage rivalry in recent memory. Hell, it even has a fight, Lawler-Cerrone, which was the first one booked for the November card, only to be delayed twice due to a Lawler injury and Cerrone illness, as well as another title defense from Woodley, one of the champions defending at UFC 205.
The conventional wisdom was that with its $100 price tag, Mayweather-McGregor would hurt UFC pay-per-view buys for the next month or two at the very least. But it’s feeling like it took a bite out of a card a month earlier, too. Perhaps this is why the UFC seemingly ended up being relatively OK with a Demetrious Johnson main event for UFC 215 in September: Only the die-hards will be shelling out $70 after dropping $100 for the boxing card. The question of if Amanda Nunes (defending her title against Valentina Shevchenko in the co-headliner) became a draw with her performances on three of the five million-plus buy selling cards of 2016 will likely continue to go unanswered. The Mayweather-McGregor factor, being the co-main event, and being underneath a Johnson fight make it an outlier from if it had headlined the International Fight Week PPV as it was originally supposed to before Nunes cancelled due to a sinus infection.
The UFC got blown sky-high last year both before and after it was sold to WME-IMG, having its best year ever on pay-per-view. But that year was carried entirely by Brock Lesnar, Ronda Rousey, and especially Conor McGregor. The UFC cards that aren’t the absolute biggest ones keep being bought by less and less fans, with the $70 price tag becoming less and less tenable unless it’s a must-see event. So UFC 214 stands as kind of a question mark: Will the main event make it a runaway hit? Or is it far enough away from that mark that it will actually draw less buys than anyone could have anticipated?
The first fight would make you lean towards the former, but recent history and the lack of strong promotion sure makes the latter sound more likely. And what exactly is the UFC going to do then?
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