In order to promote UFC 81, the UFC advertised in a very non-traditional manner. They partnered with TNA and WWE to promote the fact that an old Pro Wrestling star was going to be making his real fighting debut. The new method worked, and the show did in the neighborhood of 600,000 buys. The UFC estimated that up to 300,000 of those were first time buyers.
Brock Lesnar lost an exciting fight, and six months later he has another tough test against Heath Herring. From the looks of it, it does not look like they plan on playing up Brock’s past in Pro Wrestling anymore. The hype videos on the UFC website barely mention it, and it looks like they’re just going to treat him like another fighter, and hope his name draws in some of those wrestling fans again. My suspicion is that without the Pro Wrestling push, the vast majority of those 300,000 fans will not buy it again.
If I’m wrong, this show could be one of the biggest Pay Per View successes of 2008 for the UFC. Lesnar did a very strong buyrate up in Canada, only second to the numbers Georges St. Pierre has pulled in Canada, and he’s on the card too. If they’re able to do the kind of Canadian buys they did for UFC 83, and if they’re also able to get a bunch of pro wrestling fans to tune into a very stacked card, this could be a sleeper show that does over 600,000 buys.
The marketing for this show should be very interesting to watch. Both the Pro Wrestling fans and the Canadian fans are specialized markets that the UFC has targeted in the past, and it will be interesting to see if they do a two pronged attack to get both bases, or if they focus on one and hope the other follows.