UFC
UFC 148 "Silva vs. Sonnen II" reportedly draws one million pay-per-view buys
Jul 12, 2012 - 8:30:14 PM

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Last weekend's UFC 148 event featured one of the bigger fights the UFC has put on in the U.S., but it didn't quite hit the pay-per-view expectations for UFC President Dana White.

According to Dave Meltzer in the latest edition of The Wrestling Observer (subscription required), early estimates for UFC 148 have it coming in around one million buys. The numbers could still vary from the early estimates, but it's on par with October 2010's Brock Lesnar vs. Cain Velasquez bout, and would be the biggest number the UFC has hit since then.

However, White believed that the numbers were pointing to this fight being bigger than UFC 100, which drew 1.6 million buys on pay-per-view in 2009 with Lesnar's rematch against Frank Mir and Georges St-Pierre's title defense against Thiago Alves. Indeed, on Meltzer's radio show on Thursday discussing the show, he said he received a text from White about the buyrate saying "this sucks."

But it's not bad news in the context of this show and this fight. Though it will fall short of the record buyrate, it set records of its own. The fight was the first Middleweight Championship bout to reach the one million mark, and the first fight outside of the heavyweight and light heavyweight divisions to do so as well.

Penick's Analysis: There's nothing wrong with a million buys for this fight. It didn't have the benefit of a true Primetime special or countdown show on a widely available network, and the UFC's buys have been down over the last couple of years overall. Actually, what's more shocking than this is what Meltzer revealed on the radio show regarding UFC 147, as that event from Brazil brought in between 175-200K buys. That is a shocking number for such a ravaged event, and though it still sets a new low for the organization post-Ultimate Fighter, it's incredible that they hit that number for that card.