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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
A number of the UFC's smaller, less packed pay-per-view events have been hitting lower numbers than ever the past couple of years, pushing the basement buyrate number for those events down. So it's no surprise that Jose Aldo's most recent fight at UFC 163 scored around the lowest buyrate in his pay-per-view headlining career.
However, that event, which featured Aldo's successful title defense against "The Korean Zombie" Chan Sung Jung, still drew above the lowest numbers of the year. That distinction still belongs to the ill-fate UFC 161 card in June, but early estimates for UFC 163 have it coming in between 170,000 and 190,000 buys, according to Dave Meltzer at MMAFighting.com.
That's at least 35,000 buys ahead of UFC 161, which was headlined by the bout between Dan Henderson and Rashad Evans, but on the low end it's less than all of Aldo's headlining events, including the WEC pay-per-view card he headlined with Urijah Faber.
Penick's Analysis: The UFC 163 card was so ravaged with injury, and so close to a number of bigger events here this month and next, it just didn't have a chance as a draw. The fact that it hit above UFC 161 numbers is positive, but there's no doubting that the UFC is no longer drawing the same numbers just because they're on pay-per-view. They can still hit large buyrates, but they need bigger names to get there, and Jose Aldo's simply not one of them on his own.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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