UFC 314 took place at the Kaseya Center in Miami, Florida. The event was highlighted by Alexander Volkanovski winning the vacant UFC Featherweight title.
Old man Volk wins title
Alexander Volkanovski dressed up like an old man prior to his fight against Ilia Topuria in February 2024. Over a year later, Volkanovski won the vacated title left by Topuria. It was a masterclass by Volkanovski in his win over Diego Lopes. While Lopes was the younger of the two, it was Volkanovski who came out the victor. Even though he had dropped the three of his last four entering the title fight, Volkanovski stifled Lopes.
Pimblett pummels Chandler
Michael Chandler probably should have not waited for a Conor McGregor fight. The former Bellator standout is showing every bit of his age. Instead of keeping active, Chandler has done the PR rout of being a social media star and its clear that his skills are diminished.
Chandler looked fine in the initial round, but Pimblett took over in round 2. Pimblett was too active and fast for the 38-year-old and Chandler was reduced to a mere punching bag before the referee mercifully stopped the fight.
Admittedly, this was the best performance of Pimblett’s career and showed he is one or two fights away from a title shot. But, Chandler’s vaunted UFC entrance is a mere faint memory to his last two performances.
The event was a sellout with 18,287 in attendance for a live gate of $11,507.99. Last year’s UFC 299 drew a similar amount with 19,165 for a gate of $14,142,904 and April 2023’s UFC 287 drew 19,032 for a gate fo $11,943,363.
The bonuses went to Jean Silva who ninja choked Bryce Mitchell to sleep, Paddy Pimblett for his stoppage of Chandler and the Fight of the Night went to Alexander Volkanovski as he defeated Diego Lopes.
Sponsorships
UFC Embedded was sponsored by Total Wireless.
The Octagon sponsor were announced prior to the event which included the latest UFC sponsor, Papa Johns. Also, Wingstop and Dave’s Hot Chicken co-shared the chicken sponsor.
Also new to the Octagon was IBM which has the B2B artificial intelligence rights and Meta which has B2C AI rights. Paramount+ will be in the Octagon supporting its latest venture, “Mobland,” and Warner Bros. featuring its latest movie, “Sinners.”
TurboTax and Budweiser/Bud Light were the presenting sponsors for the evening.
4 Ocean and VeChain were a part of UFC Embedded Episode 5 picking up trash on a beach. The 4 Ocean story is interesting and seems like something the UFC would not do. I’m afraid to dig deeper about the company but on its face it seems like they are doing a good thing.
Odds and ends
With Meta a sponsor of the UFC, Threads were a part of the social media scroll during the broadcast. It will be interesting to see the conversion from Twitter to Threads as one has to think at one point, they will stop showing tweets. Ironically, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, was front row during the event.
Flexing the TKO synergy Rhea Ripley was one of the WWE talent in attendance as she rooted on fellow Aussie Alexander Volkanovski.
Michael Chandler had a Monster logo on his shorts but Paddy Pimblett did not. It does look like Crypto.com is on everyone’s shorts.
Amanda Nunes was announced as an inductee to the UFC Hall of Fame. Ironically, her return to the Octagon is imminent as she prepares to take on the winner of Kayla Harrison and Juliana Pena this June.
Conclusion
This was one of the better cards in some time based on the number of notable fighters stacked on this card. There was a considerable amount of media leading up to the event. I would suspect that this event drew the most PPV buys this year with maybe around 400K buys through the digital platform.
Leave a Reply