Alexander Gustafsson was named the winner of the fan vote to be on the cover of the upcoming “EA Sports UFC” video game. Interesting enough, Gustafsson beat out Georges St. Pierre who announced his indefinite leave from the UFC earlier in the day.
The light heavyweight will join Jon Jones on the cover of the video game which is slated to be released this spring. Gustafsson won the Metro-PCS sponsored vote in which voters picked their favorite fighter in a “tournament-style” vote. Due to high vote production from his native Sweden, Gus was the highest vote-getter in each round of voting. According to The Wrestling Observer (subscription recommended), 40% of the voting in the last week came from Europe. Most of these votes were presumably for Gus.
Payout Perspective:
The Gus vote is a little surprising considering that GSP is one of the sport’s most popular fighters. It also made Friday’s announcements a little more interesting. What if GSP announced his leave and then he was voted the cover guy for the launch of the video game? Would GSP do press for the video game this spring when he wanted time away? With Gus, you get a guy that can carry the popularity in Europe and gave Jones the best fight of the light heavyweight champ’s career. Thus, it makes having them on the cover make sense. But, for those not following the UFC, GSP would have been the more recognizable face than Gus.
Gus likely won based on his social media campaign and the staunch backing of his Swedish fans. Of course, GSP also asked his twitter following to vote for him as well. In comparison, Gus has about 59,500 twitter fans versus GSP who has close to 876K followers on twitter.
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