wow what a day

so Affliction is done as a promotion and has struck a deal with the UFC to return as a sponsor. No one knows what is happening w/ the Affliction contracts. Will they be free agents? Will they be taken by the UFC? What about the UFC's stance on the fighters in the EA video game?

The next 5-6 days are going to awesome as all of this gets sorted out.

Who could possibly have seen this coming?

Please Please Please Fedor to the UFC for at least one fight!!!

lol exactly, everyone knew Affliction was doomed after their first event. I kind of wish this event did get off the ground though, a lot of fights that i wanted to see on it.

Freaking wild week of occurrences! Josh Barnett may go down as the guy who got Fedor into the UFC. Atencio vs. White one time!!!! LOL!

Still seems doubtful that Fedor will end up in the UFC. Josh Barnett will go down as the guy who destroyed Affliction with a urine sample.

This may be true. That is a very bad thing in my view.

Dana is going to be on ESPN radio at 9PM EST tonight w/ some news hopefully. According to his twitter, Tito is back.

Agreed. Affliction dying doesn't change the fact that the UFC and Fedor don't need each other right now. Every time Fedor fights and wins it makes them need each other more. So NOT fighting is just going to delay the process.

Vitor on the other hand is a lock to be in the UFC now. Mousasi, Babalu, and Santiago all have contracts with other promotions and none of them are big enough names for the UFC to bend their rules. So unless one of those guys wants to break contract, they have a 0% chance of fighting in the UFC until they finish out their current deals.

MORE news....

Dana White's twitter: "I am going on espn 1100 in vegas at 6pm. I will be talking anything mma. Call in number is 702 364 1100! Oh yea and welcome back tito "

Source: Sherdog

i mean... dana going out publically saying that theyre after him gotta mean theyre willing to bend a little more this time right?

frank mir is a ****ing tomato can compared to fedor and his fight vs lesnar got over 1.5mm PPVs... prior to this big hyped up rivalry, he did what? he beat ****ing antoni hardonk and nog who looked to be in bad enough shape to struggle against lightweights. im struggling to see how fedor vs brock wont break 2mm by a wide wide margin. whatever hes asking, its gotta be worth it.

^^^
Both of the Affliction PPV's did less than 80k buys w/ Fedor and former UFC HW champs.

The internet isn't a good place to gauge how popular Fedor is in North America. Most of the UFC's audience won't know who he is or will have only heard of him briefly through some Affliction advertising or one of their friends who is "hardcore into MMA".

So that's why I don't think the UFC is ready to bend over for him yet. Right now Fedor and his team are the ones that have to be willing to negotiate.

And don't forget UFC 100 was a stacked event that was super-hyped and considered "historical" and all that. Brock brings in TONS of buys but that particular event had a lot more to offer than just one HW title fight.

If we saw....

Brock Lesnar vs. Fedor Emelianenko (hypothetical)
Rampage Jackson vs. Rashad Evans (confirmed)
Frank Mir vs. Cheick Kongo (rumor)
Forrest Griffin vs. Shogun Rua (hypothetical)

....all on the UFC 107 card (January 2nd -- the big, annual end of the year card) I would say 1.8 million PPV buys would still be asking a bit much. 2 million plus would be out of the question.

And there's no way Joe Silva is putting all that on the same card

I think a Fedor/Lesnar card would break 2mm if it was the end of year card for sure.

You have to factor in the UFC hype machine. They'll go nuts with his streak, and I'm sure they will re-air "The Baddest Man on the Planet" a few thousand times. Everybody that's interested in Brock, which is quite a few, will be spoon fed a Fedor propaganda promo that will burn his essence into their brains.

Also consider that most people who would be brought in by the undercards would have likely bought a Lesnar v. Mir fight minus the Hendo and GSP fights. The card's numbers were padded by Lesnar. Meaning, people buying for GSP and Hendo and Fitch are going to buy a UFC fight regardless (so long as there's at least one solid match-up). So when Lesnar fights an actual contender, and the real pound for pound champion, the buys will easily surpass UFC 100 and maybe even 2 mil. The Fedor saga is a drama all in of itself, and his personality is so dichotomous to Brocks that it will almost seem like a WWE fight in it's epic clashes. That matchup plays perfectly to the advertising side of sports, and that has to count for something.

You guys seem to be focusing purely on the domestic market. Fedor would bring far more international buys than the usual UFC fare. Affliction certainly did not do well in the US, does anyone know what the international sales were? Surely the interest in Japan alone should have been large.

also im pretty sure that the UFC has the rights to the old PRIDE footage - affliction did not. i saw those promos and they looked lolbad compared to what dana would put together. the promo will be epic believe me. and you must be joking if you think any of the other fights on the UFC 100 cards did much to break PVP records. it was all brock. if lesnar vs brock were to end up on the NYE card, id take a lot of action at even money that it breaks 2mm.

Grunch

This may have been posted already but a week or two ago Dana said that UFC 107: Rampage vs. Rashad would be getting the "Primetime" treatment, meaning the three part countdown/preview show used for UFC 94: St. Pierre vs. Penn.

Can't wait

Do you even have to pay for the PPVs internationally? I thought they were legally shown on certain channels for free?

Dana White is live on ESPN 1100 starting in a minute with a big announcement or two...

http://werlv.com/pages/2764763.php?c...tentId=2567373

I'm sure we already know what he's going to say but there's a small chance it's something else

Some countries yes some no...all have to pay for rights though. Logic dictates they would pay more for more demand somehow. I used to get all the big boxing fights with no PPV charge for example from the Swedish channel when I lived in Germany, but I am sure they had to pay.

who cares about tito ortiz

His mom, Jenna Jameson, he may even have friends of some kind, plus people that want to watch him get beat which would be a fair number I would guess.

I watched almost every UFC event a few months ago and was never impressed with Tito. And the fact that he's banging a ragged, busted up version of Jenna Jameson makes me care even less. At least Evan Seinfeld got Tera Patrick when she was hot (and is still damn hot). I know he's not a fighter, but he's probably quite a bit less famous the Tito.

roomie is trying to tell me that fedor would be beaten by NFLers 2x his size (ie. some 400 lb DT or something). this is nonsense. (cue zulzhino fight).

Well we have a somewhat good idea of how Brock sells by himself. UFC 91 had nothing in terms of drawing poor apart from Brock/Couture (personally I think Couture is a bigger draw than Mir but I digress) and it did about 1 mill buys. So how do we account for the (claimed) +500k buys? You really don't think it had anything to do with it being UFC 100? Or that GSP was on the card? Or the 12-weeks of TUF promoting Bisping/Hendo?

If the UFC wanted to break 2mm buys on Jan 2nd, they could do it. Fedor/Lesnar, Rampage/Rashad, GSP/xxx, etc. What I am debating is that if you put Fedor/Lesnar on UFC 91, it doesn't do 2mm buys. Fedor won't magically get you an extra 1mm buys by putting some of his armbars on Spike with a hiphop/metal soundtrack.