https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW8IbhgQCBM
There’s no doubt that Ronda Rousey is one of the UFC’s biggest stars – definitely its biggest active star, what with GSP semi-retired, Anderson Silva suspended, and Jon Jones in legal purgatory. There’s also no question that the biggest fight out there for Ronda is the Cris ‘Cyborg’ Santos fight. But when it comes to just how big the fight would be, there’s some debate going on. UFC prez Dana White thinks it would be crazy massive big. Just how big?
Here he is on the Jim Rome radio show, as transcribed by Yahoo Sports:
“I’ll tell you this, Jim,” White said, “when that fight happens, I guarantee you that thing does over two million pay-per-view buys. It will be massive.”
Rome quickly asked what everyone else was thinking at that moment: Seriously, two million?
“Yeah, definitely. Definitely.”
You’ll have to pardon White… maybe the Las Vegas sun has cooked his brain and he was halfway into a heat-induced stroke during this interview. Or perhaps the insane 4.4 million PPV buys Mayweather vs Pacquiao produced has permanently skewed his superfight estimates upward to an impossible degree. Back in reality land, the UFC’s best PPV performance ever was UFC 100 – 1.6 million buys for a card featuring Brock Lesnar’s rematch with Frank Mir and Georges St-Pierre.
That event also had the advantage of being the 100th UFC PPV event. “So what?” you might ask. Well, not only do people love them some round numbers, the UFC also did a great job of building up to the milestone and presenting it as the biggest event they’d ever done. They’re pretty good at hyping things up, which is obviously what Dana White is doing here. An event is only as big as you convince people it’s going to be, and the UFC is laying the groundwork for selling Rousey vs. Cyborg as something extraordinary.
Now we just have to hope they actually manage to put the fight together. With Rousey and Cyborg unwilling to meet each others’ weight demands, we’re currently at a stalemate. And anything could happen over the coming months: Cyborg could lose a fight badly. Ronda could blow out her knees and/or head to Hollywood for good. The UFC’s track record for pulling these superfights off isn’t exactly stellar, either — Brock Lesnar vs. Fedor Emelianenko and Anderson Silva vs. GSP are two matches that stand out as massive missed opportunities.
So, let’s all pray to the gods of combat sports that Rousey vs. Cyborg doesn’t get added to the list of superfights that never were. At least we know White is very aware of how much money he stands to lose if it doesn’t happen.