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[Sakara=Excitement]

Is it Fair to Blame Jon Jones for UFC 128's Lackluster Buy Rate? | CagepotatoCagepotato

Even as MMA hardcores continue to cream their collective jeans over the unbelievable awesomeness of new light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, early estimates indicate UFC 128 didn’t quite live up to expectations in the sales department. Stalwart fight journalist (and the kind of dude who keeps track of this stuff) Dave Meltzer reports his numbers show Saturday night’s pay-per-view notching between 415,000-470,000 buys, which puts it pretty much exactly on the nose of the UFC’s “average” buy rate of 445K. What’s that mean exactly? Well, to borrow a phrase from Scott Coker, it means UFC 128 didn’t really “move the needle” with casual fans.

Naturally, some of the people who get paid to have opinions about this kind of thing (dudes like us) will see this as a failure on the part of Jones himself. After all, the UFC did everything it could to market this PPV behind the 23-year-old phenom, including both a “Countdown” special and the heretofore unseen “In the Moment” documentary on SpikeTV. To this notion, we’d like to say: Not so fast. Even as a website that’s occasionally been quasi-critical of the sport’s new Christ figure, we think it’s pretty unfair to hang this particular PPV’s disappointing showing on Jones. Don’t forget that he didn’t become a full-on breakout superstar until AFTER he crushed Mauricio “Shogun” Rua to win the strap, you guys.

Obviously, leading up to UFC 128 Jones was regarded by MMA fans as a one-of-a-kind talent with almost limitless potential. On the other hand, there wasn’t really much reason to believe anyone outside of our dark little social corner had ever heard of him. Prior to his win over Ryan Bader at UFC 126, Jones’ previous two fights had been tucked away on the Versus Network, which certainly didn’t do his Q-score any favors. Given that 128 was his first-ever appearance in a PPV main event you can’t exactly expect the world from it, can you?

As Meltzer correctly points out, UFC 128 had a few other things working against it that had nothing to do with Jones. The supporting card was relatively weak, with another potential star (Urijah Faber) making his UFC debut against yet another guy nobody had ever heard of (Eddie Wineland). You can’t really expect people to line-up in droves for Jim Miller vs. Kamal Shalorus and Nate Marquardt vs. Dan Miller, either. Not to mention, Jones was up against a barely established champion who was himslef coming off a nearly year-long hiatus after knee surgery.

In addition, UFC 128 pretty much went head-to-head for the hearts and minds of 18-35 year-old males with the opening week of the NCAA basketball tournament. Didn’t take a genius to figure out who was going to win that one, since a lot of potential UFC customers probably didn’t pull their heads out of their rapidly dissolving brackets long enough to notice the company was even putting on a show.

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[IceCold48]

casual fans are idiots and only want to watch people that they are told are good and are dominant champions are talked about non stop in the media like brock lesnar.

jones vs evans will have huge buyrates but now i can see why the buyrates suck.

the casual fan isnt as big on faber as zuffa thinks and casuals have no interest in pride superstars like mirko and shogun unfortunately.

also the second round of march madness was on so most non-hardcore fans would be watching that instead and im cool with that if shogun wasnt fighting jones(two of my favorite fighters) and we had a ufc 119-esque card id be watching the bball tourney also.

also 128 had 450,000 buys which is the average for ufc ppvs its not like it totally bombed. im not surprised by this.

[GL Jeff]

Maybe its because Shogun only fights once a year,and fans forgot he was even the LHW champion. Or the fact that Jones wasnt as big as people seem to believe, we notice him,but the casual fan probably didnt pick up on him until his win over Bader. THis card was great for the hardcore fans, but not for the casuals, their really wasnt a big draw name attached to it.

People want big fights, and fights that draw interest. I felt the UFC wasnt putting enough focus on the other fighters, instead they focused on Jones with the lead up to this card.

[Badluck33]

decisions are scaring away the casual fans.

[pantomime horse]

It's difficult for me to understand low buyrates as I try to see every UFC event. I rarely miss one.

[Sakara=Excitement]

Originally Posted by pantomime horse

It's difficult for me to understand low buyrates as I try to see every UFC event. I rarely miss one.

From what it appears to me, 400k is about as low as it gets for the UFC these days. Rare cases a little lower but for the most part, this is the bottom of the barrel. Well unless Rich Franklin is headlining a card. But I digress. I think that this is the number of die-hard fans. That no matter what, the UFC can pull these numbers and the 'stars' pull in the ton of extra numbers. Case in point, look at UFC 117:Silva vs Sonnen. Silva is the furthest thing from a draw but given Sonnen's antics leading up to the fight pushed it from 400k-500k to about 1mil. But Im like you, I dont miss really any at all.

[end it with a left]

Well I would be one of those minimum 400k die hards that watches every time. That being said I would almost figure that Jones being on two free cards would help introduce him to some people. I know i was introduced to mma through spike via tuf season 1 as I was too young to go to the bars and didn't know anyone old enough that did watch it.

[jody]

The continuing failure of the U.S. economic structure...

[pantomime horse]

Originally Posted by Sakara=Excitement

From what it appears to me, 400k is about as low as it gets for the UFC these days. Rare cases a little lower but for the most part, this is the bottom of the barrel. Well unless Rich Franklin is headlining a card. But I digress. I think that this is the number of die-hard fans. That no matter what, the UFC can pull these numbers and the 'stars' pull in the ton of extra numbers. Case in point, look at UFC 117:Silva vs Sonnen. Silva is the furthest thing from a draw but given Sonnen's antics leading up to the fight pushed it from 400k-500k to about 1mil. But Im like you, I dont miss really any at all.

Yeah, that makes sense. The number of die-hard fans probably can be counted based solely off of low buyrate UFC events. It's interesting how one event can do 450,000 and another 900,000. All of the people that I know are in the die-hard category so I'll have to locate someone who isn't and find out why they only watch the UFC now and then. You just never know how good a card will end up being.

[hot_rod1886]

Was GSP a draw when he first fought in the UFC? No, only established people like Brock will bring in the money early in their fighting careers. Jones is unique however, because he is only 23 and he has the potential to be the face of MMA for years to come.