K-1 sold??!?!?!

I don't disagree with this. I just think television is the all-important medium not the internet.The UFC had the internet in the first half of the decade and lost $40million dollars. Strikeforce and Affiliction had great internet coverage yet wound up going out of business. Going to pro-wrestling TNA would have gone out of business if Spike didn't pick them and ECW did go out business when Spike (nee TNN) cancelled then. I think the UFC agrees with us all that they need to expose their fighters on free-mediums but due to the issues with Spike and the need to run to get headliners for their pay per views they've lost sight of what's necessary to make television fights work. Hopefully the new television deal will force them to better focus on delivering free fights that fans want to see. The fact that NBC Sports got a television title in October is a good sign.

 

I agree :thumbsup

 

To be fair to British promoters the television companies are squeezing them pretty tight when it comes to license fees, so many of them struggle to put on good shows for what they make from free-TV or even Sky Sports. FWIW ******'s on record saying he never wanted Khan to go on ppv so early but he had to afford to renew his contract.

Its also worth pointing out that the biggest pay per view fighter ever in the UK was Hatton who I don't remember appearing on anything other than Sky.

 

Hooray. Someone pointed out a great example to me today. Tyson's second fight after his prison sentence was actually show for free on Fox in late 1995. He then went on to do three 1million+ shows in 1996 - something's no ones match to this day. Indeed Brock (who let's not forget had years of exposure on Spike and UPN in the WWE) is the only man to do two million+ plus pay per views in a year.

Btw here's a question I've posed. Has the UFC made a mistake putting Cruz vs Johnson on free television? Cruz never drew strong ratings when WEC champion and Johnson is largely unknown. Wouldn't it have made more sense to put Jose Aldo vs Kenny Florian on free television and have Cruz vs Johnson as the semi-main event of UFC 136?

 

The only popularity record I've heard associated with Hatton is the amount of supporters that went overseas with him for his fights. I'd be astonished to see another fighter have "away fans" like that.

 

Unless Haye broke it with the Klitschko fight, Hatton has the record - more than a million Brits brought the fight against Mayweather. Hilariously 'Money' didn't take a cut of the UK PPV thinking it not that big a deal so Hatton made a ****ING (caps warranted) fortune.

 

I love the Cruz v MM fight personally, but I guess it would make more sense to put name like Aldo and Kenny on the card.

But the other side of the coin is the Cruz fight is almost guaranteed to be all action, exciting, fan friendly fight you wont get with the UFC's habit of putting HW's on free cards. And this leads to exposure, as a potentially great fight like this will have any newcomers interest heightend for the PPV with JA V KF, without losing the PPV buys that the fight would generate. Lesser of two evils I guess, as you said, Cruz isnt a draw.

 

To be fair we can only say that with hindsight. It caught everyone by surprise.

Interestingly WWE does between 40,000-80,000 buys for their shows so there is some juice in the pay per view market.

 

I guess to me its me thinking that they really need to pull a good number to impress NBC and with UFC 137 so stacked I don't see Aldo vs Florian adding many buys.

 

I see your point, but Im not sure that Kenny and Jose are that much bigger draws either to an average guy checking out a free card on NBC. Maybe they can market Aldo as a p4p top 10, but they could easily make that case for Dominick too. But Kenny's profile is the difference in this one I guess

 

That's pretty much what I'm thinking. Kenny's been on some big shows and you know ESPN is going to be all over him challenging for the title.

Btw...for the Aldo fight somebody has to make a Kenny Florian hype video with clips of the Sherk and Penn fights set to the music used below.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC7V-ayjorg[/ame]

 

atsch

Stoo, you are the Bernhard Henri Levy of the MMA section, your writing is 20% lies, 50% speculation, 15% stuff you get off other sites, 10% hate and 5% incoherent jargon.

Name one dream event where those two were relied on to fill seats,

And Aoki is one of the most respected and recognized sports figures in Japan. Sure, he has his haters over there, but name one very popular UFC fighter where that is not the case. Get your facts straight.