UFC 287 took place Saturday night in Miami, Florida at the Kaseya Center. The main event saw the rematch between Israel Adesanya and Alex Perreira.
Adesanya regains the middleweight title
The rematch between Israel Adesanya and Alex Perreira looked to be similar to their first encounter for the middleweight title as the now champion seemed to get the better of several exchanges in the first round. However, in round 2 Adesanya took advantage of Perriera’s lack of respect for his power and clipped Perreira and then finished him off with a KO.
Adesanya’s win was an upset in that he was able to KO Perreira. Will there be a trilogy fight? Adesanya seemed to infer that it would not happen anytime soon. If not a third UFC fight with Perreira, we could see Adesanya matched up with Robert Whittaker or Khazmat Chimaev.
Masvidal retires after loss to Burns
Jorge Masvidal ended his 20-year career in MMA with his loss to Gilbert Burns. There was nothing unexpected with the fight as Burns dominated the fight with Masvidal. Even though Masvidal was loved by the fans, he was the clear underdog in the fight.
The Prelims scored a big number earning it #1 overall in cable on Saturday night with 1.115M viewers and 555,000 in the 18-49 demo. It was a great lead-in for Top Rank Boxing for those viewers that stayed on ESPN as the event featuring Shakur Stevenson drew 804,000 viewers and was fourth overall in cabl.
Attendance, gate and bonuses
The Kaseya Center was a sellout with an announced attendance of 19,032 with a gate of $11,943,363.20 per Dana White at the post-fight press conference.
Bonuses went out to Rob Font, Adesanya and the Fight of the Night went to Chris Curtis and Kelvin Gastelum.
Sponsorships
Toyo Tire, Monster Energy/AM/PM, Howler Head, Crypto.com, U.S. Air National Guard, the upcoming movie, “Renfield” – Sucks to be Him, New Amsterdam Vodka, Prime, DraftKings, Modelo, Stake, Hospital for Special Surgery, Combustiveis Aditivados de Serie, Sweet Sweat, VeChain, and Monster Energy had the middle of the Octagon.
As the SBJ pointed out, Monster debuted a new branding look with the image of a full can with the decal lighting up in between fights.
Jose Cuervo, Thorne and VeChain were on the outskirts of the Octagon.
Notably, Raul Rosas, Jr. held a Monster Energy can while the official results between him and Christian Rodriguez were being read which likely indicates a sponsorship deal.
Odds and Ends
A lot of stars in the Miami crowd for UFC 287 including Theo Von, Mike Tyson, Joe Burrow, Justin Jefferson and Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel.
Donald Trump showed up as a guest of Dana White and received praise and adoration from Masvidal during his retirement speech.
It was announced that the Robbie Lawler-Rory MacDonald fight from UFC 187 will be inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame this July. For those who remember it, it was a classic fight which saw Lawler get his lip split wide open and MacDonald break his nose.
Google searches topped Saturday with UFC having over 1 million searches. Also on the list was Paul Rosas, Jr. with over 100,000 searches and Kevin Holland with over 50,000 searches.
It’s hard to think Masvidal will retire. As we saw with Luke Rockhold, who will fight another former UFC vet Mike Perry this month, no one ever retires in combat sports.
Conclusion The UFC Miami event was a success. It likely received mainstream appeal due to the Trump appearance. It felt like the UFC Embedded focused a lot on Masvidal more than they did the middleweight rematch. Despite having 3 UFC PPVs within 6 weeks, I still think that this one does a very good 450K buys.
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