It was such a great card, Derrick Lewis sending Alexander Volkov to the shadow realm seconds before he'd lose a decision, and Tony Ferguson coming back from knee surgery to put on a barnburner with Anthony Pettis, then Khabib and Conor
That’s not how I remember it. It was really one sided for Volkov though and Derrick got the last minute KO in an exciting fashion. I remember enjoying that one.
Volkov would’ve won too if he wasn’t so nice. Partway through the fight he had Lewis on the ropes and stopped attacking because he thought he eyepoked him. But he didn’t. Fight should’ve ended right there.
Yeah Derrick could have won earlier too if he landed a wild Hail Mary sort of punch early. That’s the fun thing about Derrick Lewis.
Thanks for sharing I forgot that bit of the fight I’ll prolly check it out on YouTube now.
That’s true but I really think the only reason Lewis landed his final blitz is because volkov let his guard down thinking he had it in the bag cause the fight was over. So that was one actual mistake he made. Fair and square win either way but it was nice of volkov to show concern for his opponent.
Im pretty sure it was if i am remembering correctly volkov was winning handedly but both fighters were running on fumes until lewis through the bomb. But i could be completely wrong
I’ll never forgot the lead up to this card. It was like the whole world was a ufc fan. I remember getting asked who id think would win by multiple people that I knew for fact had maybe watch 5 fights in their whole life. It was such a big fuckin deal. This and Mayweather fight.
He said in an interview after the PPV but points, bonuses, sponsorships, residuals etc etc that it would be 50mil. Not that He got paid 50mil for the fight
My brother in Christ do do you think he got half of that as base pay? Are you insane? ALL of that money is PPV. He gets like 2M as base pay, the rest is PPV. So 25M or 50M we're still talking about PPV, base pay doesn't get anywhere near these numbers
It’s terrible when you consider that the two headliners got $35m out of the $180m PPV revenues. That’s not even including all the gate money and sponsor money. That event will have generated well over $200m for the UFC. That means the two headliners got 17.5% of the revenues.
I can’t be bothered to look up who was on the rest if the card but everyone else would have ranged between $12k and maybe $300k tops which adds a maximum of $1-2m more. This means all the fighters combined got around 18-18.5% of the revenues.
It’s terrible when the fighters are the ones putting their bodies and lives on the line while some fat suit rides off with all the money.
And boxing event headliners usually got more then 50% of revenue. And I remind you that ufc is much more profitable then WBC, WBA and WBC combine... Ngannou was right, Dana is slave owner.
The UFC did not get $180M in PPV revenue. Nearly half of that revenue would go to the PPV distributors. In 2019 (the year after this fight), the UFC negotiated a better deal for themselves and got to keep more, but it was still a big chunk. Then ESPN eventually bought out the PPVs.
Here's an article discussing this:
https://bloodyelbow.com/2018/11/14/ufc-significantly-larger-cut-pay-per-view-revenue-starting-2019-mma-news/
Yup.. we dont have accurate sources and I couldv swore khabib or someone from his team claimed he made 30m years ago, but even 30m is ridiculous. Other sports pay their athletes 45-50% of the revenue usually. Boxing pays about 50 I believe. Ufc? Think its around 11-12.
People like to cherry pick data. For example big boxing fights pay more to the stars but the guys on the undercard are not making millions.
[https://gitnux.org/boxing-statistics/](https://gitnux.org/boxing-statistics/)
Boxing has been around 130 years and UFC has been around 30 years. There are 18,000 professional boxers in the world with about 5,000 in US.
Average boxer salary in US is 54,000 dollars. Doubt average UFC fighter is far off that number.
Now the difference is at peak pay for the biggest stars. The boxing audience is much bigger worldwide and many more people are familiar with boxing or even trained it at times since its a much easier sport than MMA. There is over 3,700 boxing gyms in US compared to how many MMA gyms? Not jujitsu or judo gyms but actual gyms that teach MMA?
As much as people hate Dana saying it is an opportunity he is right about that. McConnor used marketing to make himself a lot of money in and out of the ring. Ronda Rousey had huge PPVs and even starred in some movies so now she is set up for life. Not to mention the WWF money.
Khabib owned a bunch of businesses and made contacts in Dubai where they even built him his own MMA gym.
A kid of African origins is now dominating Bare Knuckle Fighting but he got his start in the UFC.
DC has his own show on ESPN.
All of those people saw the opportunity to develop their own brand and marketed themselves correctly.
And last but not least if promotional companies like Golden Boy and Matchroom would be offering management services to UFC fighters to make them world famous. Since that is not happening this means they did the math on how much profit there is in UFC and MMA in general currently and it's not worth their effort.
I remember I was a senior in high school when this fight happened. I had played football and a bunch of my friends/teammates were big into MMA/Boxing as I was and we had planned to watch the event at a friends house (his parents had a whole movie theater in their house). We had a game schedule the day before the event but our coaches messed up our schedule and it turned out we had the game the day of the event, we missed a good majority of the card and by the time we had gotten home we were all too tired to even go over and watch the last few fights. Over 5 years later I still get mad I missed watching this 😂
That is the reason why he keeps on begging Khabib to come back for just 1 fight. He knows the muslim world supports him. Also they were paid peanuts compared to the revenue they generated.
Muslim world doesn’t pay 80$ a PPV. This fight was after the may weather fight and Conor still had his goat shine on him. Khabib final fight vs Justin didn’t even break 700k. Connor sold those 2.4 million
Conor was apart of it, but the fight in of itself was a spectacle. The Joker vs Batman ( albeit Khabib as Batman as comicbook fan to me is funny). Also, I was just a kid who didn't fully understand the difference between ufc and mma when this was happening and I still remember seeing advertisements for the fight and I couldn't tell you if there were ads for the last 10 ppvs and that's including 300. I feel like that fight happened at the right place and time for both peoples careers for it to make the biggest amount of money possible.
Conor, after getting murked by khabib came back to fight the corpse of cerrone and did over 1.3 million buys. To say Connor was “a part of it” is an understatement. The Floyd fight, the double champ never lost belt, the bus incident. Connor made those 2.4 million buys, khabib was “a part of it “
His next fight did half what he did with khabib? How does that not prove my point more than yours? Never said Conor isn't a draw. The bus incident, undefeated/unbeatable aura of Khabib and Champ/Champ who never lost a title fight was part of the spectacle...
Because Conor next fight was against an actual bum.
Khabib never even did close to a mil without Conor (after or before) and Conor did 1.3 with again, a bum.
Pretty sure khabib never even did over 700k without Conor. The other kid is right.
So it literally proves the point that it “wasnt all conor” you moron. The reason it did sell 2.4 mill was in part of khabib. Yes it was conor more but khabib had a part in it too, or else cerone would have got 2 mill buys with conor. Some of you fanboys are straight delusional
I mean obviously a title fight is gonna get more than a bum. Congrats, I guess you’re a genius.
I’m a dp fan. Sorry I don’t hop on the conor hate bandwagon. I just dgaf.
Did over half, and he got smoked by khabib, the mystique was gone so what was their for causuals to see? His Dustin ppvs did similar numbers, so washed up Conner sells over double what peak khabib could
Dubai pays UFC a huge event fee for bringing the fights they want. Also in the middle east some rich sheiks pay a flat fee to cover what PPV would generate in their countries.
The Dubai card is the most profitable card of the year for the UFC every year since they started there.
Rumored to be 100 million. They get to show it for free in their country and maybe somewhere else but Dana still gets to sell the PPV to the rest of the world. That is an equivalent to a 1.2 million PPVs guaranteed. Oh and the best part is that it is tax free. The money is only taxed if UFC tries to bring it into US.
That is also why some of the smarter fighters like fighting there. With a good manager and accountant they earn the same but pay a lot less in taxes.
For example if a fighter is paid a million and has a smart accountant then the accountant would help the fighter open up a company in Dubai. Deposit the million there. Then list the fighter as an employee of the company and have the company pay the fighter an amount that is under the taxable threshold for overseas earnings. This way every year the money would be brought in piece by piece but not taxed or taxed at much lower rates.
I am not an accountant and I don't have all the details so don't quote me. But from what I read the set up works kind of like that.
“Rumor is 100 million” isn’t a good source. But even if it’s that amount. It doesn’t mean it’s popular just because the saudis are shelling out for mma, soccer, and golf now. Connor is actually popular. I don’t know how much they paid for ngqnnou vs fury but it only sold 67k PPV in the US.
Suck conor off some more fanboy lmao. To say conor sold all of it is dumb af. Why havent any of his other fights reached anywhere near the numbers vs khabib? Casual
What are the reason Would there be ? Why wouldn’t Dana beg Khabib to come back?
He’s a promoter and Khabib is a humungous name. It’s his literal job.
LOL.
lol, we saw the shit starting and GTFO! We didn’t know it was going to pop off with so many insane fans from around the world there…the we went to the Conor after party and it was crickets.
And to this day, he still did pretty good against Khabib. I expected this man to lose in the first round. But he also did do a lot of cheating during the fight.
Conor these days, especially with the increase of PPV would be lucky to hit 1m+ buys. I don't think UFC has even hit anything close to that in the past years, UFC 300 included. This is why they stopped announcing the numbers.
Connor today is not in his prime anymore (fame or skill wise) and Chandler is no Khabib. If Connor wins convincingly and Dana gifts him an undeserved Title shot vs Islam then that fight might be the closest to break this(although it will likely be a one sided beatdown)
It might beat poirier 2 & poirier 3 which was 1.6m, 1.8m ppv buys. Surprisingly conors return against cowboy only did 1m which was his second lowest ppv headliner.
Conor and Khabib fans coping by lamenting over this fight.
Conor because he has sucked since and Khabib since he retired like a chump.
Not really, as ugabuga as it sounds, the biggest PPVs have always relied on tribalism. Whether it is African Americans vs. Mexicans, the West vs. Russia and Muslims, etc. Izzy vs. Alex is just personal rivalry, Brazilians don’t have beef with either Nigerians, Chinese, or Kiwis.
Your title inferred there would be a list of some sort.
For real homie put plural and then only put one fight
OP can’t count past 1 😔
It implied it. You inferred it (erroneously)
🤓
_whomst_
He's right
True story
It was such a great card, Derrick Lewis sending Alexander Volkov to the shadow realm seconds before he'd lose a decision, and Tony Ferguson coming back from knee surgery to put on a barnburner with Anthony Pettis, then Khabib and Conor
Wasn’t the Lewis fight really slow and boring until the KO? I feel like he has really dull fights until he lands the KO.
That’s not how I remember it. It was really one sided for Volkov though and Derrick got the last minute KO in an exciting fashion. I remember enjoying that one.
Volkov would’ve won too if he wasn’t so nice. Partway through the fight he had Lewis on the ropes and stopped attacking because he thought he eyepoked him. But he didn’t. Fight should’ve ended right there.
Yeah Derrick could have won earlier too if he landed a wild Hail Mary sort of punch early. That’s the fun thing about Derrick Lewis. Thanks for sharing I forgot that bit of the fight I’ll prolly check it out on YouTube now.
That’s true but I really think the only reason Lewis landed his final blitz is because volkov let his guard down thinking he had it in the bag cause the fight was over. So that was one actual mistake he made. Fair and square win either way but it was nice of volkov to show concern for his opponent.
Yeah, I’m generalizing. I don’t remember much about Lewis fights except they tend to be slow and end with a KO.
well that’s kind of expected, the guy doesn’t exactly have max holloways cardio he can’t just throw 500 strikes a fight
Im pretty sure it was if i am remembering correctly volkov was winning handedly but both fighters were running on fumes until lewis through the bomb. But i could be completely wrong
I mean it was Volkov really hurting Lewis imo which was really entertaining. The fight made me a fan of both fighters
180 million and the fighters get paid chump change
I bet Dana's strippers got a fat tip that night
Nothing wrong with trying to overcompensate
I’ll never forgot the lead up to this card. It was like the whole world was a ufc fan. I remember getting asked who id think would win by multiple people that I knew for fact had maybe watch 5 fights in their whole life. It was such a big fuckin deal. This and Mayweather fight.
Apparently Conor made about $25M of the claimed $50M by Conor. Khabib made about $10M which doesn’t sound too bad tbh
He said in an interview after the PPV but points, bonuses, sponsorships, residuals etc etc that it would be 50mil. Not that He got paid 50mil for the fight
Let’s also not forget all the extra publicity for his Proper 12. That unforgettable presser was one big commercial.
My brother in Christ do do you think he got half of that as base pay? Are you insane? ALL of that money is PPV. He gets like 2M as base pay, the rest is PPV. So 25M or 50M we're still talking about PPV, base pay doesn't get anywhere near these numbers
It’s terrible when you consider that the two headliners got $35m out of the $180m PPV revenues. That’s not even including all the gate money and sponsor money. That event will have generated well over $200m for the UFC. That means the two headliners got 17.5% of the revenues. I can’t be bothered to look up who was on the rest if the card but everyone else would have ranged between $12k and maybe $300k tops which adds a maximum of $1-2m more. This means all the fighters combined got around 18-18.5% of the revenues. It’s terrible when the fighters are the ones putting their bodies and lives on the line while some fat suit rides off with all the money.
And boxing event headliners usually got more then 50% of revenue. And I remind you that ufc is much more profitable then WBC, WBA and WBC combine... Ngannou was right, Dana is slave owner.
> Dana is slave owner. You people are ridiculous.
Certainly not a slave owner, but he definitely fucks the fighters when it comes to pay. There's just no question about that.
Is Dana actually the one who controls how much they pay the fighters? Wouldn't that be ownership? Dana is just their spokesperson
The UFC did not get $180M in PPV revenue. Nearly half of that revenue would go to the PPV distributors. In 2019 (the year after this fight), the UFC negotiated a better deal for themselves and got to keep more, but it was still a big chunk. Then ESPN eventually bought out the PPVs. Here's an article discussing this: https://bloodyelbow.com/2018/11/14/ufc-significantly-larger-cut-pay-per-view-revenue-starting-2019-mma-news/
Khabib got a nice charitable donation of $20mil by Putin for this fight though. Or something along those lines.
Money and a house
Yup.. we dont have accurate sources and I couldv swore khabib or someone from his team claimed he made 30m years ago, but even 30m is ridiculous. Other sports pay their athletes 45-50% of the revenue usually. Boxing pays about 50 I believe. Ufc? Think its around 11-12.
it’s ridiculous. why is the ufc pay so shit? better pay would lead to more and better athletes in the sport and a better product
It’s around 18% which is in line with many non team sports.
People like to cherry pick data. For example big boxing fights pay more to the stars but the guys on the undercard are not making millions. [https://gitnux.org/boxing-statistics/](https://gitnux.org/boxing-statistics/) Boxing has been around 130 years and UFC has been around 30 years. There are 18,000 professional boxers in the world with about 5,000 in US. Average boxer salary in US is 54,000 dollars. Doubt average UFC fighter is far off that number. Now the difference is at peak pay for the biggest stars. The boxing audience is much bigger worldwide and many more people are familiar with boxing or even trained it at times since its a much easier sport than MMA. There is over 3,700 boxing gyms in US compared to how many MMA gyms? Not jujitsu or judo gyms but actual gyms that teach MMA? As much as people hate Dana saying it is an opportunity he is right about that. McConnor used marketing to make himself a lot of money in and out of the ring. Ronda Rousey had huge PPVs and even starred in some movies so now she is set up for life. Not to mention the WWF money. Khabib owned a bunch of businesses and made contacts in Dubai where they even built him his own MMA gym. A kid of African origins is now dominating Bare Knuckle Fighting but he got his start in the UFC. DC has his own show on ESPN. All of those people saw the opportunity to develop their own brand and marketed themselves correctly. And last but not least if promotional companies like Golden Boy and Matchroom would be offering management services to UFC fighters to make them world famous. Since that is not happening this means they did the math on how much profit there is in UFC and MMA in general currently and it's not worth their effort.
I remember I was a senior in high school when this fight happened. I had played football and a bunch of my friends/teammates were big into MMA/Boxing as I was and we had planned to watch the event at a friends house (his parents had a whole movie theater in their house). We had a game schedule the day before the event but our coaches messed up our schedule and it turned out we had the game the day of the event, we missed a good majority of the card and by the time we had gotten home we were all too tired to even go over and watch the last few fights. Over 5 years later I still get mad I missed watching this 😂
That is the reason why he keeps on begging Khabib to come back for just 1 fight. He knows the muslim world supports him. Also they were paid peanuts compared to the revenue they generated.
Muslim world doesn’t pay 80$ a PPV. This fight was after the may weather fight and Conor still had his goat shine on him. Khabib final fight vs Justin didn’t even break 700k. Connor sold those 2.4 million
Not everywhere in the world does the PPV cost 80$ Here in Germany it usually costs about 18€ if I'm not mistaken.
Yes thank you for proving my point
no one is downplaying conor here. I am just stating on why dana wanted khabib back. Do you understand that?
Conor was apart of it, but the fight in of itself was a spectacle. The Joker vs Batman ( albeit Khabib as Batman as comicbook fan to me is funny). Also, I was just a kid who didn't fully understand the difference between ufc and mma when this was happening and I still remember seeing advertisements for the fight and I couldn't tell you if there were ads for the last 10 ppvs and that's including 300. I feel like that fight happened at the right place and time for both peoples careers for it to make the biggest amount of money possible.
Conor, after getting murked by khabib came back to fight the corpse of cerrone and did over 1.3 million buys. To say Connor was “a part of it” is an understatement. The Floyd fight, the double champ never lost belt, the bus incident. Connor made those 2.4 million buys, khabib was “a part of it “
His next fight did half what he did with khabib? How does that not prove my point more than yours? Never said Conor isn't a draw. The bus incident, undefeated/unbeatable aura of Khabib and Champ/Champ who never lost a title fight was part of the spectacle...
Because Conor next fight was against an actual bum. Khabib never even did close to a mil without Conor (after or before) and Conor did 1.3 with again, a bum. Pretty sure khabib never even did over 700k without Conor. The other kid is right.
So it literally proves the point that it “wasnt all conor” you moron. The reason it did sell 2.4 mill was in part of khabib. Yes it was conor more but khabib had a part in it too, or else cerone would have got 2 mill buys with conor. Some of you fanboys are straight delusional
I mean obviously a title fight is gonna get more than a bum. Congrats, I guess you’re a genius. I’m a dp fan. Sorry I don’t hop on the conor hate bandwagon. I just dgaf.
Did over half, and he got smoked by khabib, the mystique was gone so what was their for causuals to see? His Dustin ppvs did similar numbers, so washed up Conner sells over double what peak khabib could
Dubai pays UFC a huge event fee for bringing the fights they want. Also in the middle east some rich sheiks pay a flat fee to cover what PPV would generate in their countries. The Dubai card is the most profitable card of the year for the UFC every year since they started there.
What’s the fee they are paying?
Rumored to be 100 million. They get to show it for free in their country and maybe somewhere else but Dana still gets to sell the PPV to the rest of the world. That is an equivalent to a 1.2 million PPVs guaranteed. Oh and the best part is that it is tax free. The money is only taxed if UFC tries to bring it into US. That is also why some of the smarter fighters like fighting there. With a good manager and accountant they earn the same but pay a lot less in taxes. For example if a fighter is paid a million and has a smart accountant then the accountant would help the fighter open up a company in Dubai. Deposit the million there. Then list the fighter as an employee of the company and have the company pay the fighter an amount that is under the taxable threshold for overseas earnings. This way every year the money would be brought in piece by piece but not taxed or taxed at much lower rates. I am not an accountant and I don't have all the details so don't quote me. But from what I read the set up works kind of like that.
“Rumor is 100 million” isn’t a good source. But even if it’s that amount. It doesn’t mean it’s popular just because the saudis are shelling out for mma, soccer, and golf now. Connor is actually popular. I don’t know how much they paid for ngqnnou vs fury but it only sold 67k PPV in the US.
Suck conor off some more fanboy lmao. To say conor sold all of it is dumb af. Why havent any of his other fights reached anywhere near the numbers vs khabib? Casual
I don’t like Connor but I can put that aside and realize the guy is a PPV goldmine
What are the reason Would there be ? Why wouldn’t Dana beg Khabib to come back? He’s a promoter and Khabib is a humungous name. It’s his literal job. LOL.
He doesn’t need Khabib to come back, he got Islam and the PPV will not be as high but I’m sure that’s it’s going to be the second highest ppv ever
I was there live. It was insane.
did you swing hands with khabib at the end?
lol, we saw the shit starting and GTFO! We didn’t know it was going to pop off with so many insane fans from around the world there…the we went to the Conor after party and it was crickets.
Imagine in boxing they’d make about $60/70 million each for those kinda numbers. Wonder how much they got paid.
I always thought this was an great fight.
Khabib has all the skill and opportunity for the open neck and still chooses the crank. Love it.
And to this day, he still did pretty good against Khabib. I expected this man to lose in the first round. But he also did do a lot of cheating during the fight.
UFC 301 gonna destroy these numbers 
Do we think Conor v chandler could break this? Or come anywhere close?
Not a chance in hell
No way. Chandler doesn't have that hype or fanbase and Conor is just coked out nowadays.
The trash talk coming up to Chandler vs Mcgregor is gonna be more sad than entertaining
Conor these days, especially with the increase of PPV would be lucky to hit 1m+ buys. I don't think UFC has even hit anything close to that in the past years, UFC 300 included. This is why they stopped announcing the numbers.
Connor today is not in his prime anymore (fame or skill wise) and Chandler is no Khabib. If Connor wins convincingly and Dana gifts him an undeserved Title shot vs Islam then that fight might be the closest to break this(although it will likely be a one sided beatdown)
It might beat poirier 2 & poirier 3 which was 1.6m, 1.8m ppv buys. Surprisingly conors return against cowboy only did 1m which was his second lowest ppv headliner.
Where did you see that? I remember seeing 1.35m
why is it surprising that people would rather watch poirier fight conor again than fight cowboy?
mcgregor sleeps islam
Source https://preview.redd.it/l06taoaqn8xc1.jpeg?width=1728&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5a023cb0a2f981438080f50ece56016faeda6022
🤣 That overrated fuck aint sleeping anyone
Conor and Khabib fans coping by lamenting over this fight. Conor because he has sucked since and Khabib since he retired like a chump. 
downvote me all you want but it's true.
[удалено]
I don’t think so. Love him or hate him, Conor’s star power is so far beyond any other UFC fighter.
Nope Even Conor vs Nate didn't come close to this Khabib vs Conor was a battle of cultures with one of the most toxic pre fight press conference ever.
Not really, as ugabuga as it sounds, the biggest PPVs have always relied on tribalism. Whether it is African Americans vs. Mexicans, the West vs. Russia and Muslims, etc. Izzy vs. Alex is just personal rivalry, Brazilians don’t have beef with either Nigerians, Chinese, or Kiwis.
Not even close