UFC 92 Apparently Shattered The All-Time PPV Buy Record For The Company

Ryan Hockensmith recently conducted an interview with UFC president Dana White on ESPN.com.

The interview contained all sorts of juicy tidbits of news, including:

-the winner of the Henderson/Franklin fight at UFC 93 WILL coach opposite of Michael Bisping on the next edition of the Ultimate Fighter

-the Henderson/Franklin vs Blsping fight will take place at 185 pounds

-the UFC is planning on having Chuck Liddell fight in April

-Rashad's first title defense will likely come against "Rampage" (not a big surprise at all)

-Shogun Rua and Wanderlei Silva are both possibilities for Liddell's next fight

-Dana would still sign Fedor in a heartbeat

-a Matt Hughes / Matt Serra fight will very likely take place in the spring or summer

These were all interesting pieces of news, but nothing was really surprising or new.

The most surprising piece of news revolved around the buyrate for UFC 92.

White mentioned that the buyrate for UFC 92 "crushed" UFC 91, which did just over a million buys. UFC 91 was headlined by Lesnar vs Couture. White said that UFC 92 did around 150k - 175k more buys than UFC 91, which would put it right around the 1.15 - 1.2 million buy mark.

This would make the UFC 92 PPV the biggest of all time for the company.

Prior to UFC 92 taking place, most people figured that the card would do around 700-800k buys. I didn't hear of anyone even entertaining the thought of it cracking a million buys, let alone shattering the all-time record.

The card was stacked from the top to the bottom, and contained three matches that could have headlined any card.

Many people are now wondering why the buyrate was so high, but one thing is for sure - the UFC is primed to print more money in 2009. Lesnar vs Mir II, Couture's next fight, Liddell's next fight, Penn vs GSP II, UFC 100 - this is going to be another great year for the company, and we should see another 2-3 UFC PPVs top the one million buy mark in 2009.

Source: MMA Submission - One on One With Dana White