The first estimates as to exactly how succesful last month's UFC 202 pay-per-view headlined by the rematch of Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz are in and they are mind-blowing.
As per Dave Meltzer of MMAFighting.com, UFC 202 looks to have sold somewhere in the region 1.65 million pay-per-views in the United States alone which makes it the most successful in the 23 year history of the UFC. The figure places it marginally ahead of - you guessed it - the first meeting between McGregor and Diaz at UFC 196.
The UFC's landmark UFC 100 event headlined by Brock Lesnar and Frank Mir is now relegated to third place in the all time list.
These are absolutely staggering figures, particularly when you consider the what appeared to be a general lack of enthusiasm for the rematch between McGregor and Diaz when it was announced, along with the fact that UFC 202 wasn't a particularly historical card like, for example, UFC 200 was considered to be.
Diaz vs. McGregor 2 looks to have broken UFC pay-per-view record (@davemeltzerwon) https://t.co/vjD8v0FXJh pic.twitter.com/vynpclW05B
— MMAFighting.com (@MMAFighting) September 7, 2016
To put this into some context, this places some 400,000 buys higher than any WWE pay-per-view in history. Think about that; every Wrestlemania ever, or every meeting of The Rock, or Stone Cold, or The Undertaker... they pale in comparison to the handiwork of the former plumbing apprentice from Crumlin.
If we transplant these figures to the world of boxing, McGregor v Diaz II would place number 6 all time in pay-per-view buyrate history, replacing the first meeting of Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield and falling around 300,000 under the 2002 meeting of Lennox Lewis and Tyson.
It is also worth nothing that these aren't even the global figures and the 1.65 million figure could well be rounded up when you take into account those who ordered the event via the various streaming services made available by the UFC.
The new owners of the UFC will presumably be licking their lips at these numbers. Whatever you think of Conor McGregor as an athlete or a person, there's no denying he is one of the most popular figures in the history of combat sports.
