MMA Junkie reports the attendance, gate and bonuses from Saturday’s UFC 183. Thales Leites was the big winner of the night taking away two bonuses.
UFC 183 drew 13,114 fans for a gate of $4.5 million which, when verified, makes it the 9th best gate ever in the state of Nevada. It surpasses Rampage Jackson-Chuck Liddell ($4.3) from May 2007 and right behind Brock Lesnar-Randy Couture ($4.7M) from 2008.
The bonuses handed out for UFC 183 included Thales Leites, Tim Boetsch and Thiago Alves. Leites and Boetsch put on the Fight of the Night and Leites also scored a Performance of the Night. Alves stopped Jordan Mein to earn the other Performance of the Night. The bonuses were the standard $50K with Leites earning $100K for his two.
Payout Perspective:
Despite the fact that there were still tickets available via Ticketmaster as of Thursday, the attendance and gate were very strong with it cracking the top 10 in top MMA gates in Nevada. Its the first card since UFC 168 that has made it into the top 10. Even though there was less runup than UFC 182, the return of Anderson Silva facing Nick Diaz seemed to have been a big enough draw to garner a strong gate.
There was an absolute flood of Brazilians at the fight. It was impressive. And judging by the lack of English it felt like most had traveled from Brazil.
I think Silva is still the biggest draw for his countrymen, and Diaz was the perfect foil for him.