It’s almost 2015 and the MMA world has come full circle for about the fourth time in talking about the former baddest man on the planet, current WWE champion, and former UFC heavyweight champion, Brock Lesnar; However, as much as most big time fans would want, his return may take a different route this time. What if there was a real potential for Lesnar to end up on a different channel? How about Spike TV, with Bellator? This could be a very real result as we all know Brock to be a man of money and providing for his family. As of right now, Bellator has a strong outlook for the future and has made big changes that perfectly accompany Lesnar’s style. Viacom, Spike TV’s owning company, has put a large amount of confidence in Scott Coker, Bellator’s VP, and in the new product they seem to be unfolding. Brock’s contract in with the WWE and Vince McMahon is ending next year after appearing less than 15 times this year in ring, and even less in actual matches. It’s clear that Lesnar has no interest in traveling and putting on a show for fans, but he has kept his physique from the UFC and seems to be actively training in some aspects of his skills. Obviously, Bellator wants a legitimate fighter, but also wants a big draw to start bringing fans over to watch their cards.
If we go back and look at the UFC’s best pay per view cards, there is a significant continuous trend, Brock Lesnar. The best selling PPV of all time is UFC 100, which did 1.6 million buys, headlined by 2 title fights, GSP vs Thiago Alves and Brock Lesnar taking on Frank Mir. The second best falls to Lesnar again, UFC 116 which did 1.16 million buys, in which he defended his title against Shane Carwin. Now the 6th and 7th spot, on most lists, is also held by a headlining Lesnar, UFC 121 and 91 respectively. Not to be outperformed without a title in his hands, Brock would headline UFC 141 vs Alistair Overeem and make the top 20 best selling PPV list as well. What does this tell us? Brock sells tickets. His early fights vs Frank Mir and Heath Herring were also above 600k buys just to add to his reputation. Simply put, the guy is a cash grab. Five PPV’s out of a possible seven were in the top 20 PPV buys for the UFC, and the other two are probably in the top 30. Placing this into perspective is simple, only one card has amassed 1 million buys since UFC 121 and that was UFC 168, the rematch of Chris Weidman vs Anderson Silva. Not even UFC 129, which set an attendance record, broke the million buys barrier. Reflecting into the booming period between 2007 and 2010 we see the old legends leaving and the new stars emerging, which makes promotion so important as fans will pay to see names they are familiar with.
Now, to relate this into Bellator. There have been two head to head nights for Bellator vs UFC this year and surprisingly, Scott Coker and Bellator had the upper hand. UFC Fight Night 50 and Bellator 123 went head to head on September 5th and did very comparable numbers. The UFC was headlined by Jacare Souza and Gegard Mousasi while Bellator saw Curran vs Pitbull II. Additionally, the two companies battled for ratings again on November 15th where UFC 180 and Bellator 131 aired. This was the real test as Bellator had former UFC vets Tito Ortiz and Stephan Bonnar squaring off and the UFC had an Interim title fight between Fabricio Werdum and Mark Hunt in the UFC’s first visit to Mexico City. Bellator gather up a peak of over 2 million views that night whereas UFC sees an estimated 200-350k buy rate. With Bellator picking up steam, many of these high profile fighters may see an opportunity to make some real cash in the next few years by signing with Mr. Coker. Another very important tie in for Brock Lesnar is the sponsorship deal that the UFC signed with Reebok. This eliminates his big money deals with his high profile sponsors that he even had WWE allow their logos inside their broadcasts. Also, with their entry into the PPV market, he would be able to negotiate a very large portion of buys and even bonus for viewership on free cards.
Finally, the most important part of this whole scheme would be how simple it would be for him to completely dominate the talent in Bellator. Not to undermine any of the heavyweight fighters in Bellator like Cheick Kongo, champion Vitaly Minakov, Bobby Lashley, Lavar Johnson and many up and comers, but the man was a UFC champion in a very talented division. None of the big names have any real wrestling prowess and have shown weakness to a strong punch and double leg take-downs, which is what Brock excels at. Brock could come in on one fight and take the title in the next, or even start him in a tournament where he can fight a few times on one year and build up a big fight vs Mikanov. There are so many ways to market Lesnar that there’s no way to not make money off of him. Without accurate statistics to show it, I can say that a majority of the PPV buys he gathered were definitely Pro Wrestling fans. These fans packed into sports bars and living rooms around the world to watch the next big thing take on UFC vets and start picking up big wins and win a championship. With the recent signing of Phil “CM Punk” Brooks to the UFC, we may very well see Brock Lesnar hanging up his boots and dusting off his gloves to take one more ride into the giant money pit, that is Bellator.
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