I do think more stars are coming though. A lot more.
Khabib has 37M instagram followers and he has only been gone a few years. He only had three title defenses. Ronda only had like five too. Conor none.
Just wait until someone like a Khabib, Ronda, Conor comes along and skips the champ champ fights and gets 6 or 7 title defenses.
Title defenses are tough to get though. On average I think the average champ in UFC history has had like 1.6 title defenses and that includes all the big reigns like Mighty Mouse and GSP had lifting the average up.
None champ stars like Nate, Masvidal, Chimaev, Dustin, etc… will obviously come along more often than say a GSP or a Jones.
Like I know Makhachev does not have charisma to be a big star in America for the American audience but he has 8M instagram followers so he is clearly popular among Muslim fans around the world.
For perspective, Dustin holds the record for most FOTN awards in UFC history and has beat Conor 2x and even he only has 5M fans after all that.
I don’t think UFC makes money on PPV after a certain point anymore. That revenue goes to ESPN via their broadcast deal. Now in terms of how much of UFC’s revenue comes from their broadcast deal outside the US, I have no clue. Obviously they want their viewership to be as high as possible for negotiations in future broadcast deals regardless of what the market is. Anyway, I heard the Oliveira and Volk title fighs were a big success for UFC PPV but you know those numbers don’t get released anymore so who knows.
Yeah, the ESPN deal is just the US but UFC earned 300M a year from it as of 2018 and its been said the next deal could be twice as big given the promotions growth.
1 two weight UFC champ
12 current or former champs.
18 fighters who are ranked in the top 10.
4 of the 11 UFC men to ever win 10 or more FOTN/POTN bonuses in UFC history.
3 of the 12 UFC women to ever win 3 or more FOTN/POTN bonuses in UFC history.
Both the male and female all-time FOTN/POTN record holders are on the card.
The next UFC card after 300 is an APEX Fight Night, it has…
0 two weight UFC champs
0 current or former champs
2 fighters who are ranked in the top 10.
0 of the men to ever win ten or more FOTN/POTN bonuses.
0 of the women to ever win three or more FOTN/POTN bonuses.
The next PPV, 301 has…
2 current or former champs
2 fighters ranked in the top 10.
0 of the men to win ten or more OTN bonuses
0 of the women to ever win three or more OTN bonuses.
Because the naturally existing potential fights that are most in demand… Du Plessis vs Adesanya or Strickland, Jones vs Aspinall, Conor vs Chandler or Diaz III, Makhachev vs Gaethje, Topuria vs Max etc…could not be delivered to the market so it doesn’t look “nice” to the hardcore fans because they were not demanding Gaethje vs Max, Perreira vs Hill, Weili’s fight, etc…
