This is from Dave Meltzer, so I thought I would share this with you guys. Pretty interesting stuff. The UFC has gotta be happy with the way this turned out, even with the lack of promotion and especially with the economy in the toilet. I mean, the gate did a hair over $4.8 million, and only 293 seats were left, so for all intensive purposes, it was a sellout. Anyway, here ya go...
"We will have more next week, but UFC 91 did big numbers. Based on numbers we’ve gotten, there are places where it was just slightly below UFC 66 (the record setter which did 1,050,000 buys) and it looks to have beaten UFC 61 (Shamrock vs. Ortiz, 775,000) for second place. It looks to be No. 3 in Canada behind UFC 79 (Silva vs. Liddell; St. Pierre vs. Hughes) and UFC 83 (St. Pierre vs. Serra) but ahead of St. Pierre vs. Fitch and Lesnar vs. Herring in August. That would indicate most likely topping 800,000 buys. To me, anything under 700,000 is a disappointment and anything over 750,000 at this stage is a positive. If it hits 800,000, that means Lesnar will have headlined shows that did 2 million buys this year. Only Tito Ortiz in 2006 has ever done that in MMA, and Oscar De La Hoya only did that once (2007). Mike Tyson holds the record doing 4 million buys with three main events in 1996. It looks to be almost certain that it’s the No. 1 PPV event so far this year in North America, as Wrestlemania is in the 667,000 range, and of the two, Wrestlemania was the one better promoted. With the exception of Wrestlemania 17, boxing shows with De La Hoya, Tyson or Evander Holyfield on top, and maybe three other shows (Chavez vs. Whitaker, Liddell vs. Ortiz and Mayweather vs. Hatton), it could potentially be bigger than anything else ever. De La Hoya vs. Pacquiao is expected to end at No. 1 for 2008. De La Hoya’s name is gigantic and he’ll get the mainstream that nobody else will and with Pacquiao’s drawing power it should do North of 1 million."
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