Spinning Shit -Non N00B -Unless the opponent does the heavy lifting and is charismatic enough to promote the fight on their own (Chael, Rashad, Rampage) or something extraordinary happens like the Cormier media day fight, ~350k seems to be Jones' water line.Spinning Shit - If Jon Jones vs Alexander Gustafsson did 310k buys, this number has to be much better than many people thought. I mean Holly off of 2 straight losses, Ronda losing so no heat on a possible rematch for the belts, and an opponent no casual had ever heard of. Plus Silva fighting another unknown. Over 200k is a victory.
The problem is that outside of the Miller v Poirier fight, there wasn't a whole lot that will make people interested in buying the next one. A bad card negatively impacts the next one, which is too bad because 209 should be a 500k+ buy but 208 was so terrible people might just stay away.Yea but any casual fan friend I had all said "Jones is fighting who? He's just gonna kill him, what a waste of time" and refused to order the ppv or even go to a sports bar to watch it. Gus was coming off of two decision wins that werent super eventful, he basically managed to somehow have a boring Shogun fight, and hadnt fought in 10 months when the Jones fight finally took place.
The truth is, the average casual fan only knows who Chael, Rashad or Rampage is. They dont know who Glover is, or Gus, or OSP for that matter, also consider people wanted the Cormier 2 fight, not fucking OSP. Cormier vs Gus bombed too, but that card had fail written all over it anyway.
The UFC did an awful job hyping Gus and Glover in the lead up to their title shots. The Rashad fight did decent because of the HEAT between them, and a lot of casuals were still crossing over from a time when Rashad was this undefeated Liddel killer.