
Conor Mcgregor just posted on Twitter that his fight with Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone. It was worth noting that the fight was not even a title fight and the rest of the card was not that stacked with big names.
Congrats to the @ufc on a well fought 2020! The only sporting company on the planet to come through the entire year! Incredible!
I am honoured to secure their highest PPV of the year with McGregor Vs Cerrone.
Congrats Donald, and also on his double submission win last night. #No1 pic.twitter.com/Xvh76Gki3U— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) December 21, 2020
It was Mcgregor’s comeback fight after a long layoff. His last fight was against Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 229 on 6 October 2018. Without the main-event, one could argue that the fight could have been a fight night due to how thin the overall card is.
The PPV fight card still topped for the whole year. There were a lot of PPV cards that were stacked up until the prelims. This just shows that Conor Mcgregor is still the biggest name in the UFC.
The UFC 254 could have also have had a chance to top it but failed due to the viewers catered to the Middle-east viewers. The time difference could have been a factor but the fight was still successful overall. Khabib Nurmagomedov is also one of the biggest names in the UFC, probably second to Conor Mcgregor.
It was also revealed the top 5 PPV for the year 2020. These are the reported buys according to the UFC.
Coming in at number 5 is UFC 254: Khabib vs Gaethje, where the fight was in a different time that made for the Middle-East Viewers. Khabib is a very well known fighter that has a huge fan base in the Middle east. The fight card generated 675,000 PPV buys, given only one title fight.
Number 4 and 3 on the list are tied with UFC 249 and 253. UFC 249 was headlined by Tony Ferguson vs Justin Gaethje. It was supposed to be Khabib vs Ferguson but was canceled due to the pandemic. It was for the interim lightweight strap. The co-main event also featured Bantamweight title fight Henry Cejudo vs Dominick Cruz.
UFC 249 was the middleweight clash of Israel Adesanya vs Paulo Costa. There was a lot of bad blood between the two fighters mainly marketing the fight to generate a lot of PPV. The fight predictions were insane given that Costa always puts on the pressure in the fight and Adesanya is a master counter-striker.
Number 1 and 2 is not clear since it was first revealed that Conor Mcgregor topped the list with around 1.3M PPV buys but UFC 251 also did 1.3M PPV buys. Jorge Masvidal also thinks that they are the true number 1 for 2020.
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— Ibrahim Kawa (@Abraham_kawa) December 21, 2020
Ibrahim Kawa is Jorge Masvidal’s manager and indicates that they did more than 1.3M PPV buys. If what he is saying is true, then they beat the Mcgregor effect for the year 2020. Meanwhile, Jorge Masvidal also posted a tweet, that he does not even care.
I’m not even trying #supernecessary
— Jorge Masvidal UFC (@GamebredFighter) December 21, 2020