We all knew that Nick Diaz vs. Georges St. Pierre was one of the bigger fights of the year that the UFC was going to promote and we’ve all heard by now how the PPV numbers are trending for some highs that the UFC have not seen in quite a while. The PPV numbers are “trending” towards the million-buy mark, looking to be in the range of Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen II, which drew in a hefty 925,000 PPV buys.
It looks like UFC 158 pulled in viewers across the board as numbers across all platforms were up this past weekend. According to reports, the prelims on FX for UFC 158: Diaz vs. St. Pierre pulled in 1.58 viewers, the third largest number that UFC prelims on FX have ever seen. To top that off, Fuel TV’s postfight coverage saw 125,000 viewers, which for the fledgling network is an incredibly strong number.
We should note that the UFC really didn’t put much marketing muscle behind this PPV and critics had been talking about how they expected the fight to sell itself. In a way it did, but one would have to wonder if some of the push that they gave to UFC 157 was put into this fight if they would have done even bigger numbers. Regardless, Diaz and St. Pierre have proven to be PPV draws in what has been a bit of a down period for the UFC following the Brock Lesnar era.