I’m not going to lie — when I heard that Rashad Evans pulled out of his fight with Daniel Cormier due to injury last week, I was disappointed. I thought this was a great matchup and was anxious to see if cutting down to 205 would hurt Cormier.
Even though Cormier will stay on the card and fight UFC newcomer Patrick Cummins, I initially thought this would hurt the PPV buys for UFC 170. But after going through some stats, I quickly changed my mind since facts don’t lie.
Here are the top 10 reasons UFC 170 will rank in the top 5 PPV buys this year.
10. Valentine’s Day is over: Last week, Valentine’s Day unfortunately fell on a Friday, so you were busy doing “the right thing” and making sure your significant other was happy all weekend. But this Saturday, it’s “your time” to watch the fights without being bothered by Cupid.
9. Ronda Rousey vs. Sara McMann: 2 undefeated fighters in the main event for a championship belt; stakes don’t get any higher than this. Someone’s going to have to a take a loss Saturday. You think either woman is expecting to lose?
8. Judo vs. Wrestling: Both Rousey and McMann are experts in their fields, Rousey with judo and McMann with wrestling, so will be interesting to see which martial art will have the advantage in the fight.
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7. Twitter following: Rousey has over 477,000 Twitter followers. Out of the titleholders, she is second only to Jon Jones in following. Wonder if she’ll tweet about the fight? Perhaps so, it’s not like she’s already been doing that.
6. No slouch with Strikeforce: In Rousey’s last fight with Strikeforce against Sarah Kaufman, she did 676,000 viewers (second all time in Strikeforce) and if combined with the replay that number would jump to 908,000. Her fight before was her first bout against Miesha Tate which drew in 431,000, putting both fights in the top 10 Strikeforce events.
5. Women lay it on the line: UFC President Dana White constantly tells fighters to “lay it on the line and make sure you don’t leave the fight in the hands of judges,” and the women seem nastier than the men, wanting to get at each other as soon as the bell rings. Expect the same Saturday.
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4. “Rowdy” is big draw: “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey is a huge star and has been from the get go. There were 13 UFC PPV’s in 2013 with Rousey’s main event against Liz Carmouche at UFC 157 and co-main event against Tate at UFC 168. Those two events ranked number one and six out of all events last year alone. Credit White for reversing his decision to have women fight, as it has paid off well. and I predict will continue to do well this Saturday.
3. Rousey the movie star: Rousey has crossed over into films and will appear with Sylvester Stallone in The Expendables 3 and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson announced that Rousey will be in Fast & Furious 7. Did you just read that, Rousey on the big screen with movie superstars Stallone and The Rock? They’re probably not going to let their friends and fans know about Rousey vs. McMann…
2. Olympic Medalists: When was the last time two fighters had won medals in the Olympics and fought each other in MMA… Mmmm, never. Rousey won a Bronze medal at the Beijing Games in 2008 and McMann won a Silver medal in Athens. Just another seemingly unreal storyline here.
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1. Hate her or love her: Ronda Rousey is Ronda Rousey. She’s going to say and do what she wants, that’s why fans either love her or hate her. The interesting thing with the love/hate thing — people will watch her for both of those reasons and I guesstimate, will put this event in the top 5 for this year.
(Wonder if there was a theme here… Putting Ronda Rousey on an event is always a good thing.)
David Kano is lead writer for MMA Show News and co-host of The Hollywood MMA Show. You can follow him on Twitter @TheDKano.
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