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UFC 90 (10/25 Chicago)
By Zach Arnold | October 25, 2008
Jonathan Snowden at UGO has UFC 90 coverage right now (videos, interviews, etc.) Interestingly enough, UFC 90 is the sixth most popular entry searched right now on Yahoo, which is not a bad indicator about the popularity of Anderson Silva.
Reports: USA Today | AOL Fanhouse | Sherdog | MMA Torch | NBC Sports | Five Ounces | MMA Junkie
Dave Meltzer said that UFC lost a big opportunity to promote the UFC 91 event (Randy Couture vs. Brock Lesnar) at UFC 90 by not having any interviews with Randy Couture (there at the event) or Brock Lesnar to hype up the fight. Meltzer thinks the UFC production crew is overworked with too many shows and that their creativity is starting to wear down. He pointed out that the job UFC did two years ago building up Matt Hughes vs. Royce Gracie was fantastic, whereas Lesnar vs. Couture (a fight featuring bigger names) has had little or no heat-up promotion for what should be “a one-million buy show.” He’s wondering if the PPV will draw 750,000 buys now…
- Fightlinker: Where’s that killer instinct for Thiago Alves?
- Bloody Elbow: Patrick Cote does not deserve a re-match
- Steve Cofield: Anderson Silva re-invents himself as ‘the jerk’… Cote injured in the third round
- The Chicago Sun-Times: Success at gate, and in the arena
- Sportsnet (Canada): Silva should face Yushin Okami next
- Kevin Iole (Yahoo Sports): Anderson Silva’s actions unbefitting his stature
- The Chicago Tribune: Chicago gives warm welcome to UFC
- Josh Gross (SI): Anderson Silva’s latest title defense more showboating than substance
- Sam Caplan: Anderson Silva’s friends in high places prove to be fair-weather
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 32 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
The Griffin/Sherk fight has been great so far.
Bizarre. When Tyson saw that Sherk wasn’t going to try to take him down anymore he should have taken it to the ground and broke his arm.
Was the crowd booing the decision or were they booing Sherk?
Booing Sherk, I think.
I don’t think Grffin had it in him to take down Sherk. His few attempts were subpar and Sherk stuffed them immediately.
Wow, Junior’s got game.
That was indeed an impressive victory.
Unbelievable.
Crazy stuff.
Anderson played with his food too long. Very disappointing ending to an otherwise great night of fights.
“Silva should face Yushin Okami next”
yes he should
Isn’t Okami scheduled to face Dean Lister in December? I do agree as well that Silva Vs. Okami should happen.
MMAWeekly reported that Okami and Lister were signed for 92, based on an interview with Lister and confirmation from his management.
Yet another disappointing card put on by the UFC. This is becoming a trend.
$2.8 mil and 15000+ fans? What recession?
Other than the anti-climatic main event, we had awesome fights after awesome fights. One huge upset and two candidates for the FON. Alves may be the future 170 champ.
Disappointing card? Hardly. I was the first to declare UFC 89 disappointing. But 90 was excellent.
Meltzer claimed last night that going into the show, the advance was $2.5 million and around 9,750 or so in paid tickets. He further claimed that the seats left were also the most expensive. He claimed by his calculations (guessing) that they papered the building with around 4,000+ tickets.
Papered or discounted at the window? To get from the 2.5mil to the 2.8mil, they had to average $57 per ticket.
If they papered with 4k tickets, then the remaining sales would have been at $240 per ticket.
There are casinos in the area, but no real casino resorts to fall back on. All things considered, it’s still a good gate (better than Cinci, a little lower than Columbus, but in an arena with only 75% of the seats). It’s not UFC 79 numbers, but that was an extreme outlier with the casinos, two huge headline fights, and the New Years Eve bump.
Daaamn! Papered the building with HALF of the tickets… daaaaaaaamn!!! That is NO good lol.
Twas a decent card and I actually agree with Meltzer; this Couture Lesnar fight is huge, and is happening VERY soon, they should have pumped it up more!
Sherk/Griffin & Tiago/Kos fights were great.
I think Fedor regained the #1 P4P spot tonight as well.
I realize that you can’t run supercards all the time (in the UFC’s case, they have the roster of fighter to do so, but you’d burn the fans out), but this card was thinner than Kate Moss.
Silva v. Cote was a ridiculous fight to promote as a PPV headliner and the UFC looked pretty foolish for it last night.
I liked Alves-Kos and Sherk-Griffin, but presenting the card they did at the ticket and PPV prices they did, to the mainstream fan was pretty unacceptable. They ran fights that a hardcore would enjoy and could justify but beyond that it’s borderline insulting that they were asking “fans” to pay for this one – especially given the next couple ones coming up.
They can be pissed at the Spider all they want, but in the end they only have themselves to blame.
This card does not deserve the amount of negativity it is receiving. But it is to be expected.
The card overall was entertaining, but anytime a main event ends in a weird way, people either swear off the UFC or complain about how bad the card is.
The same thing happened at UFC 46 (Couture/Belfort 2), despite the undercard being fantastic.
Griffin/Sherk, Dos Santos, & Koscheck/Alves made the card more then worth it.
A maximum of 350,000 of the UFC’s most hardcore fans bought last night’s show. Advertising Couture/Lesnar or doing interviews on it is completely pointless, those fans are all buying every one regardless.
“Maximum?”
I suppose you have no source and are talking out your ass.
Since Anderson Silva was at the top of the card, you’re probably right though.
And 4k isn’t “half the tickets.” I know you’re not stats majors, but I’d like to think you got through the eighth grade.
The public prediction from the UFC was that Couture/Lesnar would draw 1.0 million to 1.5 million buys.
I am actually predicting 400,000+.
The card was decent except for Maynard, who single handedly killed the momentum and I am actually one of his biggest fans. The term “lay and pray” is overused by people who don’t understand MMA, but that was lay and pray.
Anderson was just trying to keep himself and the fans interested. If a fighter looks totally unbeatable, then fans lose interest. I think he was trying to make Cote look good by letting it go to the 3rd. He probably respected Cote’s for his show of confidence and spirit before the fight and figured he was worthy of three rounds.
Here’s the word problem version:
“Dana and Larry have an ice-cream stand. They sold 11 ice cream cones for $254 each, and gave away 4 ice cream cones. Dana and Larry paid $1,000 for ice cream, cones, and to rent their ice cream stand.
What was Dana and Larry’s gross profit?”
“Dana and Larry also sold the rights to broadcast a three hour television special to a cable company in return for half the money. The cable company sold the special for $45, and sold 350 copies. How much revenue did Dana and Larry earn by making the TV special?”
“Dana and Larry retained the right to sell an expanded version of the TV special on DVD and Blu-ray disc, as well as to sell video of each fight online and on Xbox 360, and to sell the whole three hour event online through Yahoo and their own website. How much more money would Dana and Larry have to earn to be filthy rich?”
Dos Santos’ nickname should be “retcon” for putting the heavyweight division back in order with a single punch.
After watching the fights, I think Thiago Alves has a real good chance of beating GSP. He’s arguably the best striker in MMA at the 170 lb division, and he successfully stuffed all of Kos’ takedowns. Granted, GSP has superior wrestling than Kos, but it still says a lot about Alves TD defense. It’s a very intriguing fight, I’m more interested in it than I am in Penn vs GSP II.
Seriously, anybody who has a problem with Anderson Silva’s performance last night confuses me.
Whether it’s in boxing or MMA, has no one ever seen a fighter’s gameplan change when he realizes that he’s up against someone who is defiantly un-afraid of them and who can take a good shot? It’s really not that unusual or incredible.
When I watched Anderson Silva yesterday, I quickly thought about his love for Roy Jones Jr…. Mostly because his performance was VERY Roy Jones Jr. like.
During RJJ’s prime, he was beating up fighters so easily that all of a sudden there were no legit challengers for him (just like Silva). And then he got very boring very quickly because he didn’t feel threatened during the fight (like Silva showed yesterday).
I am willing to chalk it up to just one bad performance, but if this continues for Anderson Silva, I will not be impressed.
Between Dos Santos and Reljic, UFC certainly seems to have found some young guys who can help out in the division. Hopefully they can keep finding a guy every few months.
Anyone hear anything about Reljic’s back?
Ivan —
Right, I mean, Cote took some good shots from Silva, and Silva knows that Cote can strike, so he was waiting for Cote to leave openings, and when Cote did leave openings, he took full advantage of them. I’m sure he could have rushed in, clinched and tried to finish the fight early, but he would have put himself in danger as well.
45,
I really don’t think you can say that was anywhere near one of UFC’s “good” efforts. At best it was a to mediocre-to-satisfactory card.
Maynard-Clementi was a total l’n’p snoozer. The Brazilian grudge match was a dance contest.
Really, what was so spectacular about Sherk-Griffin anyways? Two dudes who are known for wrestling, using a secondary skill – which albeit looked technically sound – but again for each guy, showed a complete lack of ability to finish the fight. It was a “boxing” match for the most part, between two guys who are not boxers. Now we know they can’t finish the fight on the mat or on the feet.
At least in Alves/Kos you saw the devastating power of Alves and his vastly improving game to avoid the takedowns of one of the UFC’s best takedown artists. And we say someone almost finish someone – however, you also saw a guy who had his opponent hurt and on the ropes but was unwilling to take a risk to finish because he didn’t want to risk losing a title shot opportunity. While in some ways it shows patience and maturity, it also shows lack of killer instinct or in the least tentativeness to seize opportunity.
On top of that you have a massively disappointing main event.
I’m sorry but the card just wasn’t that good in it’s set-up or its execution.