Official gate and attendance numbers for this past week's UFC on FX 5 card were in line with the totals announced on fight night. The event, which took place Oct. 5 at Target Center in Minneapolis, drew 7,055 fans for a live gate of $357,590. A total of 3,657 free tickets, or "comps," were issued. The Minnesota Office of Combative Sports, which oversees MMA in the state, today released the numbers to MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). In the event's headliner, Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva stopped previously unbeaten Travis Browne to snap a two-fight skid and win for the first time in the UFC. The main card aired on FX following prelims on FUEL TV. UFC officials initially announced an attendance of 7,049 for a live gate of $358,000. On fight night, UFC President Dana White said he was satisfied with the numbers. "I thought the place was awesome tonight," White said. "This is one of the fights on free TV where we're traveling around. This thing did $350,000. You can't keep rolling doing f------ $2 million gates when we come back to some of these markets. The first time we came to Minnesota for the pay-per-view with Brock on it, this place wasn't sold out." The UFC first visited Minnesota's Target Center for UFC 87 a little more than four years ago, which featured Georges St-Pierre vs. Jon Fitch, as well as Lesnar vs. Heath Herring on the pay-per-view main card. While not a sell-out, that event drew in excess of 15,000 attendees for a live gate of $2.25 million.
Why is it that 90% of the discussion here is about the business of the UFC, and not about MMA? Why don't we talk about fights, sometimes? You know, Eddie Alvarez is fighting tonight...
Its weird people caring so much. Its important to know and understand as it has future ramifications but some of these threads get more interest than RBRs and discussion threads.
You guys think that the fact that Travis Browne and Bigfoot were the headliners might have something to do with the lack of interest in this card? I'm not at all a fan of Zuffa management, but the hate threads are getting excessive. A lot of people here are just trying to pick fights.
The UFC needs to decide which way it wants to go. If they want to be an all encompassing MMA organization, meaning Big Cards in Las Vegas and Macau as well as small cards in some backwater city in Japan they probably need to introduce regional titles and regional GMs, it would help stir interest in these small cards and actually give people a shot at believing the card they're paying money for matters in the long run. So UFC Asia/Oceania have Yushin Okami as the MW champion, North America would have Chael, South America would have who is ever behind Anderson, EMEA would get one as well and the World champion would be Anderson. It possibly could give a clearer picture and regional Champion vs Regional Champion fights for the number 1 contender spot could happen. Another and hopefully more likely deal would be regional promotions, same concept but branded differently therefore making the main UFC brand the cream of the crop. so there would be Pride in Japan/Asia, Strikeforce in the US, and other promotions that have maybe a UFC crossover, or if a guy like Big Nog gets injured he'll go there for his rehab fight.