Michael Bisping steps in for injured Chris Weidman and faces Luke Rockhold for the middleweight title at UFC 199. The announcement was made on Wednesday by Dana White on ESPN.
Coming off a career-altering win against Anderson Silva earlier this year, Bisping gets a rematch against Rockhold. The champ submitted Bisping at UFC Fight Night in Sydney, Australia in November 2014.
Weidman had to pull out of his rematch with Rockhold due to a neck injury.
Payout Perspective:
One would have to feel good for Bisping as he finally gets a shot at his long elusive chance to be middleweight champion. But I’m not quite sure that this will do much with respect to moving the needle with PPV buys. I do think Bisping is a good talker and will do his best to promote this fight. As for the announcement, we see once again that the UFC values the broader appeal and audience of ESPN than it does its broadcast partner of FS1.
200k ppvs.
Didn’t d predict 8 ppvs to do 1M each?
Good call.
Lol the mediocre cards continue
400k buys. Makeshift mediocre headliners draw the same as boxing top dogs these days. HAHAHAHA!!!
Is that gonna be like 3 straight ppvs 300k or lower.
Mmas biggest star wants to be a boxer.
Boxing’s next ppv expectation 75k.
Boxing’s biggest star is retired and he only gets attention by talking about mma fighters who are bigger than him.
Overall, UFC cards continue to be better than boxing. Even the prelims are popular enough to televise. Do we see that in boxing?
Remember when MMA wasn’t even on boxing’s radar?
Now, you have it’s biggest star trying to stay in the limelight with the more charismatic, temporarily shelved MMA star.
MMA’s rise continues.
d you’re delusional as usual. McTapper and Rousey dragged mayweathers name through their interviews any chance they got in order to get mainstream attention.
That came long after Mayweather was trashing mma over 10 years ago, when the UFC came out of the TUF era and gained a ton of popularity.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha
Boxing prelims are what you’re seeing on alot of pbc cards. Alot of those fighters aren’t known. The occasional NBC cards and FOX cards have the bigger names.
But once again the UFC is a brand. People watch the UFC prelims because its the UFC.
If those fights didn’t carry the UFC banner people wouldn’t watch them.
PBC cards are not prelim cards and Bellator has no name headliners beat PBC easily on Spike in terms of rating.
PBC going out of business, HBO/Showtime slashing boxing budgets, ppv in the gutter, no star power……the future of boxing looks bleak.
https://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/boxing/canelo-alvarez-vacates-wbc-title–but-hopefully-bout-with-triple-g-is-still-alive-000117000.html
Hahahaha. What a mess.
D they said the same thing after Tyson, after de la Hoya, and now after mayweather. Olympics are this year after that many of them will turn pro and create a new batch of potential stars.
D you don’t realize that now Canelo does not have to follow the wbc guidelines for the fight. Makes negotiatons easier.
“D they said the same thing after Tyson, after de la Hoya, and now after mayweather. Olympics are this year after that many of them will turn pro and create a new batch of potential stars.”
Only difference was, the UFC wasn’t dominating ppv at the time and the fanbase hadn’t turn. Now, the 18-49 is pretty one sided in the UFC’s favor. Younger people watching mma over boxing, clearly makes it look very bleak for boxing going forward.
“D you don’t realize that now Canelo does not have to follow the wbc guidelines for the fight. Makes negotiatons easier.”
No, he wants more money and he wants to delay the fight. That’s why he is doing it. I wouldn’t be stunned at all if this didn’t go down until 2017, if at all.
4.4 million buys last year, boxing is far from dead. Ufc is a league, boxing is a sport with major followings in foreign country’s. When’s the last time ufc sold out a stadium the size of wembley? They need that ppv money to survive and even then they pay their fighters peanuts.
Weidman-Bisping should do around 400k buys. Should be a solid financial success!
What does this article have to do with PBC??? Come on people….
And in terms of this UFC, this match in no way interests me. The UFC needs to bring in some more interesting talent