Cruz was completely out early but Triple C's got them quick hands so it's hard to blame the ref too much for the late stoppage.

Not even the dumbest thing in the UFC this year. Cowboy taking $200k with no PPV cut to fight McGregor was a far dumber move.

No way, dude is 4-8 in his last 12 fights, Fighting Connor was low risk, high reward.

Tony coming in on a 12 fight win streak and taking Gathje on short notice directly after a full camp to prepare for Khabib was an insane risk. The only fights he should have taken were big money ones, so unless he got points for this, the risked some giant paydays for absolutely no reason and lost.

I'd fight Connor for less than $200k and I'm undefeated.

UFC 246 had a $10 million gate (top 10 all time) and an estimated 2 million PPV buys which would make it the 2nd biggest UFC PPV of all time. Conor McGregor estimated that he would make $80 million for the PPV, which is even more than he made for fighting Khabib. Cowboy made $200k. I'm guessing Conor is embellishing some but Cowboy taking that fight without any PPV points is just terrible:

well hopefully Dana rewards him with a Conor fight next, and if he wins he'd be right back on track even though he's looks to be a decent sized dog in it

I bet Gaehtje at the last second last night. Should have posted my angles as some may have followed. Tony obviously prepared for a different style fight, but even more than that, the let down of the mega-fight replacement thing is important, and also the matchup as Tony stands there and dares you to wail on him just seemed a problem in this spot. AND Tony is getting old. All that bode poorly for Tony imo.

Question: did Tony take it to the floor and try to choke him out any? Or was it just rock'em sock'em robot style the whole time?

He kinda went for a takedown late in the fight but immediately gave up.

LOL Dana doing the right thing

I had the Gaehtje, Ngannou, CCC treble, all by knockout too at 18/1. Feeling fairly smug this morning as my UFC predictions are notoriously awful.

amazing, so he trained entirely for grappling, his new opponent's strength was slugging, and he slugged it out with him until he was too tired and hurt to really grapple. Horrible. Gaethje sucks on the mat doesn't he?

I really think Tony doesn't appreciate his own strength on the mat. Almost anybody but Khabib is screwed there with Tony. Yet he stands and slugs.

yeah he sucks so much that he's the only div1 all american in history of his uni

Tony was always banging. It's his gameplan against 100% of the opposition. If he goes to the ground it's to finish fights.

If he ever fights Conor, he'll bang with him as well even though it will not end up great for him more often than not

Why would McGregor want to fight Ferguson after he got killed like that? The risk/reward just is not there

what risk? there's no risk Conor prints money every time he fights another human being win loss or draw

who else do you have him fight in order to get back in title picture which is what he clearly wants?

Waits for Khabib and Gaethje and then fights the winner seems the obvious answer.

He's in the title picture now. Winning against Cowboy is good enough.

Fixed

Yes, he went for an Imanari roll but Justin was not in the same zip code.

Let me put some #s out there and you can do the math.

Tony Ferguson has had 0 takedowns in his last 8 fights.
The last time Tony Ferguson had more than 1 takedown was 17 fights ago.
Justin Gaethje has not been taken down in his last 5 fights.
Justin Gaethje has never been taken down more than once in the UFC.

And the gates and buyins had very little to do with Cowboy being the opponant. They could have put anyone in the ring and got those numbers. What does cowboy usually make per fight?

There's a reason he was in there tho.

Should've at least angled for what Nate got in the first fight. It's not surprising bc he's a bumpkin company man who complains about being a bumpkin company man.

But that's old hat when it comes to performers: Business isn't their forte.

The PPV generated more than $100 million. Donald accounted for more than .2% of that. The bigger the PPV the more the UFC can compromise on fighter pay.

You say that Cowboy doesn't matter, but there is always an A side and a B side and Cowboy was an excellent B side. The fact that this was 2nd only to the Khabib fight in terms of all time UFC PPV buys is evidence of that.

Cowboy is the guy that will agree to take a fight in 2 weeks without even knowing who his opponent is.

Right, like Leben before him. There's a lot of guys that way, next to none with his size name tho.

And Cowboy has complained about his pay lately (if you were countering that), even before the fight with Conor.

Where are you getting this number for PPV buys? Wiki has 246 at 1,000,000 buys, which is outside of the top 15 PPV buys.

Actually, you're right. 1 million does appear to be the figure for US PPV buys and that would be most appropriate when comparing various events. 2 million was more speculative based on various metrics comparing it to pre-streaming PPVs.

That being said, this PPV supposedly made more money than other PPVs because the UFC had recently increased their revenue streams from oversees PPVs (not included in the 1 million figure). So, yes I agree the PPV was not as big as I originally thought but it is still terrible that Cowboy couldn't even secure a 7 figure payday.

It looks like he just took whatever the UFC normally pays him. This past week he got paid $200k to show and $20k for fight week incentives for UFC 249 and he wasn't even on the main card.

Why would McGregor take a hard fight that he'll get limited credit for winning after Gaejthe just destroyed Ferguson? Ferguson needs to build his value back up to get to McGregor.

You don't get to fight McGregor by losing fights in lopsided fashion over 5 rounds.

Cowboy was just a tuneup and the biggest name that McGregor could fight that would be credible enough for people to not say meh