From the sounds of comments made by Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President Dana White, the pay-per-view (PPV) numbers for UFC 162 are going to a doozy.
While it is still extremely early and more accurate figures won't come out for a while, the UFC boss told media members in a scrum (watch it here) following Saturday's (July 6, 2013) event that he is extremely happy with how PPV numbers were trending.
The final official figures won't be released to the public, as the UFC is a private company who does not share the official number of buys for each event, but White says the numbers are roughly on par with last summer's UFC 148 event.
UFC 148, which also featured an Anderson Silva middleweight championship fight in the main event, reportedly did somewhere in the range of 800k to 1 million PPV buys, although that's just speculation.
Silva defended his title against Chael Sonnen on that night; however, this year he wasn't so lucky as "The Spider" was dethroned in shocking fashion by the unheralded Chris Weidman.
If the PPV numbers were looking good going into UFC 162, then they are sure to get even better as the UFC will likely get a significant number of buys off replays from people who want to witness Silva's first UFC defeat.
Dave Meltzer of MMA Fighting, the guru of MMA ratings and PPV numbers, wrote a more in-depth report on the importance of the alleged PPV numbers, which you can read here.
For more news and notes on UFC 162: "Silva vs. Weidman," click here.