It’s been rumoured on Twitter and various other websites that Lesnar-Carwin and/or Machida-Rua II are being considered for UFC 108; a card that has effectively become the organization’s New Years event.
While the postponement of UFC 106’s main event is more bad news for the UFC, things could have certainly been a lot worse for the organization. Lesnar could have waited until two weeks before the fight to announce that he was pulling out, and really left the organization in a promotional quandry. Worse still, he could have toughed it out and greatly diminished his chances of retaining the belt.
Lesnar may ultimately lose anyway, but the UFC wants its biggest cash cow at his best on fight night.
On the bright side, the UFC is now likely to have one, maybe two, main events for the New Years card, which is usually their biggest event every year – buyrate or otherwise. They’ve also got time to more heavily promote the rematch between Ortiz and Griffin for 106, which is the new main event of that card.
A good strategy for the company might be to really leverage the appearance of Randy Couture on SpikeTV in the week prior to UFC 106. If the UFC’s PPV success is partially dependent upon momentum swings of casual fan interest, a great push of the UFC 105 card featuring Captain America could be enough to generate additional buzz and some “piggy-back” effect for the UFC 106 event to follow one week later.
The success or failure of UFC 105 and its ability to generate a buzz for the return of Tito to the octagon will go a long way towards determining the success of the UFC’s 4th quarter of 2009.
Machida vs Shogun will most likely NOT happen on Jan 2nd, and will be pushed back for their Super Bowl show. Machida will not be healthy by Jan 2nd, specially with a 60 day suspension and all the punishment he took from Shogun. Anderson Silva vs Vitor is also iffy on that date, since Anderson didn’t want to fight on the Jan 2nd event, though he may change his mind now that Lesnar vs Carwin may be on that event.