UFC president Dana White reveals the record McGregor vs Khabib SMASHED
CONOR MCGREGOR’s defeat against Khabib Nurmagomedov smashed the pay-per-view record by half a million buys, Dana White has revealed.
McGregor now holds four out of the top five records, and also holds the two highest gate figures.
His bout with Nurmagomedov ended in the fourth round, as McGregor tapped out after being caught in a neck crank.
Immediately after the fight was declared over, Khabib jumped the fence to get at McGregor’s team-mate, Dillon Danis.
Nurmagomedov’s team-mates then jumped into the cage to attack McGregor, leaving UFC president White fuming.
White refused to give Nurmagomedov his belt inside the cage, but explained that his mood changed once he heard the PPV figures.
In an interview with TMZ Sports, he explained that the fight did better than he expected it to.
“The pay-per-view numbers are starting to roll in, so I’m in a much better mood than I was on Saturday,” White said.
“We didn’t do 3 million.
“But it’s so hard to crack 2 million in.
“Even (Mike) Tyson-(Evander) Holyfield was at like 1.995 (million), things like that didn’t crack 2 million.
“We’re way over 2 million, so I’m happy.”
In the build-up to the fight, White predicted that the PPV numbers would be double that of McGregor’s boxing match with Floyd Mayweather.
The infamous fight in 2017 did an incredible 4.6 million buys, though White predicted the Khabib bout would do better.
“Well, let me put it to you this way: We’re trending between 2.6 and 3 million, right?” White added.
“But, everything is trending, killing Mayweather/McGregor – the numbers. I’ll give you an example, one small example: UFC Embedded, the first episode with Mayweather & McGregor, did 800,000 views in 24 hours.
“This one did 1.7 million in 24 hours. It’s just, all numbers like that are just double what we did on May/Mac. What does that mean for PPV? I don’t know, we’re going to find out.”
Top five highest PPV buys:
1 - Khabib vs McGregor UFC 229 - >2,000,000
2 - Diaz vs McGregor 2 UFC 202 - 1,650,000
3 - McGregor vs Diaz UFC 196 - 1,600,000
3 (tied) - Lesnar vs Mir UFC 100 - 1,600,000
4 - Alvarez vs McGregor UFC 205 - 1,300,000
5 - Aldo vs McGregor UFC 194 - 1,200,000
5 (tied) Tate vs Nunes UFC 200 - 1,200,000