Hey everyone,

Just a few hours left to enter your predictions if you want to participate in the latest Tapology contest. The prize this time around is a $500 betting account on BetOnFighting.com, given to the person who picks the fights the best. 

Our goal is to be the #1 spot for you to enter and track all your MMA fight predictions, and we appreciate the support and positive feedback we've had so far.

 

To enter the latest contest, just click through:

 

On Saturday night you've already got 55,000 reasons to be curious about what goes down at the Rogers Center in Toronto.  Now you've got $500 reasons more.

Everlast is presenting Tapology's $500 UFC 129 prediction contest, with the winner-take-all prize of $500 in excellent Everlast merchandise.

All you need to do is use Tapology's slick system to enter your UFC 129 predictions. Our goal is to be your home base for making and tracking all your fight picks, so while you're there why not lock in some Bellator, Strikeforce, M-1, or Tachi entries as well.

Click through the poster to begin, post your picks down below in the comments if you want, and good luck.

via www.tapology.com

Bad Boy's UFC 128 contest on Tapology is tonight. Picks lock in 7 hours, at 7:00pm eastern. Lock them in for your chance to take home the $500 grand prize of Bad Boy merchandise.

The leaderboard showing the top 250 will update during the fights here:

http://www.tapology.com/fightcenter/events/ufc-128-shogun-vs-jones/predictions-leaderboard

 

To get going on entering the contest, click through the poster.  Good luck BE readers.

Get your lenscrafters on and start studying those tales of the tape, folks. The next prediction contest is here with Bad Boy presenting Tapology's UFC 128 game.  The person who picks the fights the best this Saturday night will win $500 of Bad Boy merchandise.

All you need to do is use our simple picking system to enter your 128 predictions. Our goal is to be your home base for making and tracking all your fight picks, so while you're there why not lock in some Bellator, Titan FC, or M-1 entries as well.

Click through the poster to begin, post your picks down below in the comments if you want, and good luck.

 

About 18 hours remain for you to lock in your 127 predictions and to have a chance to win the $500 contest for the best picks.

People are putting all kinds of predictions up. With a lot of evenly matched fights on the card, there are all kinds of ways you could set up your picks.   One thing is for certain, if you haven't already joined Tapology to lock in your picks on all of these contests, what are you waiting for? It is THE place to track and store all your fight picks, from UFC to MFC to BAMMA. Plus you automatically get entered into the contests for any prizes.

Good luck. Click the poster if you need to get started, and post your predictions down below if you want.

Here's an early preview of this weekend's Tapology contest for all the BE loyalists:

$500 in cold, hard cash is up for grabs for the person who picks the fights the best.  Deadline for getting your picks in is 7:00pm ET on Saturday.

Haven't started tracking your MMA predictions on Tapology yet? Perfect time to get started.  We're constantly adding more cards (BAMMA and MFC are also available this weekend), and adding new features (our users talk, we listen).

Good luck on this one - a couple readers here almost won at UFC 126.

The responses remain strong for the Tapology contests so we are going to keep on going and going.

This time BetOnFighting.com has stepped up to sponsor Strikeforce: Fedor vs Silva and has put up a $500-funded betting account to the winner. All you need to do is be the #1 fight picker for Strikeforce tomorrow night.  To get started, click the contest poster below to get going:

 

We're trying to make Tapology.com your home-base for making and tracking all your fight picks. UFC, Strikeforce, Bellator, and as many other cards as we can stuff in there. And you can take your fight picks and bring them back here and embed them right into Bloody Elbow comments to show off your skills.

Good luck and enjoy the fights.

The last time that we did a Tapology contest giveaway (for UFC 125) the response was so strong that we decided to keep the contests and the prizes rolling.

This time Jaco Clothing has stepped up big time to sponsor the contest and has put up a monster $500 online shopping spree at their website to the winner. All you need to do is be the #1 fight picker for UFC 126 tomorrow night.  To get started, click the contest poster below to get going:

We're trying to make Tapology.com your home-base for making and tracking all your fight picks. UFC, Strikeforce, Bellator, and as many other cards as we can stuff in there. And you can take your fight picks and bring them back here and embed them right into Bloody Elbow comments to show off your skills.

Good luck and enjoy the fights.

Hey everyone we've had tons of feedback and interest in the $1,000 contest we're running for UFC 125.

Posting one more article here to the top so that anyone who missed it can get their chance. You can also embed your picks here on BE as an image, and when the results of the fights take place, the image will automatically update and show your results.

We are fast approaching 1,000 total entries. Competitive but not impossible to win. The leaderboard is here:

http://www.tapology.com/fightcenter/events/ufc-125-resolution/predictions-leaderboard

 

Good luck!

What's up BE readers.

You probably already know that UFC 125 is this weekend, and if you aren't excited about it yet, it's time to get there.

To celebrate the launch of Tapology.com, which gives you cutting edge tools to store and track your MMA predictions, we're running a $1,000 contest for this weekend's UFC 125 card. 

Everything is automatic and updates in real-time as fight results come in.  You can store and track your pick performance for UFC, Strikeforce, Bellator, Sengoku, Dream, MFC, and more. The site has a bunch of other features, but what's most important right now is this contest.

The $1000 UFC 125 contest is winner-take-all, and with only a few hundred people entered at the moment, your chances of winning are solid if you make a good set of picks.

Here's the contest poster. Click to begin, and thanks for giving it a try.

The last MFC was pretty solid entertainment and this is a pretty good card too.

I've got:

- Douglas Lima over Jesse Juarez

- Razak Al-Hassan over Dwayne Lewis

- Kajan Johnson over Ryan Healy (oddsmaker upset)

- Rodney Wallace over David Heath

- Ryan Ford over Pete Spratt

- Dhiego Lima over Bill Fraser

 

If you want to get in on the action I highly recommend signing up and storing your predictions, and getting in on the leaderboard for MFC 27:

http://www.tapology.com/profiles/gregory/compare_predictions/mfc-27-breaking-point

I didn't make any undercard picks on this MFC as I've never heard of these dudes, but in total there are 9 fights.  Good luck and hopefully there is a live-results article coming up on Bloody Elbow for this event. I didn't see anything yet.

Steven Kelliher recently had the chance to talk with Bellator's Roger Huerta about what I think is the biggest fight in the young promotion's history this Thursday night.   See below for excerpts, as well as an update on who fans are picking to win each of the big fights for this card. 

If you want to make your own fight picks, the new tapology.com has a great system for keeping track of all of it. Easy to use, clean layout where you can easily see how you're doing over time, compare against friends or other people, and lots more.

When Huerta signed on to participate in Bellator’s Season 2 Lightweight Tournament, fans salivated at the prospect of a dream match between the former UFC lightweight contender and Eddie Alvarez. Unfortunately, Huerta lost his semifinal bout to the unheralded Pat Curran, and it seemed as though the fight with Alvarez would never materialize.

While Curran was originally set to face Alvarez for the Lightweight Championship in Philidelphia, a training injury forced the Chicago native out of the contest, allowing Huerta to step in for a non-title superfight with the champion.

Asked what went wrong in his Unanimous Decision loss to Curran, Huerta was thoughtful. "I can’t really explain what was going on," he said about the May performance. "I’m not taking anything away from Curran. He performed well for his part, but I couldn’t be the best that I could be that night so I don’t know."

photo via MMA Weekly

“I’m not going to lie, maybe I didn’t do the best that I could in training,” Huerta said. “Honestly, I trained by myself for that fight. Before that fight I was with a whole team of guys who were all getting ready for fights, and then after the first fight of the tournament everyone was banged up and I didn’t have many training partners to get ready. It wasn’t the right preparation I should have been doing for Pat.”

With his tournament loss in his rear view mirror, Huerta is now firmly focused on the task at hand. “Right now I have Eddie Alvarez in front of me, it’s a wish come true, and I really couldn’t have asked for anything more than this,” he said.

“I’m going into this fight with everything I have in me,” a passionate Huerta said. “We’ve had a gruesome camp; it’s been the hardest training camp I’ve ever had and it’s all coming together. I’m going in there like this guy’s trying to kill me and kill my career because I don’t think I’ll ever get another shot like this.”

The rest of the Roger Huerta interview can be found here.

 

Bellator 33 Main Card Fight Predictions

As of the time this entry was published...

56% for Eddie Alvarez (most picking decision)
44% for Roger Huerta (evenly mixed dec/sub/tko)

83% for Ben Askren to become the new champ (most picking decision)
17% for defending champ Lyman Good (mix of decision, KO/TKO)

94% for Judo Olympian Rick Hawn in his Bellator debut (most picking KO/TKO)
6% for Levon Maynard

67% for WEC vet Deividas Taurosevicius (most picking decision)
33% for 2-time Bellator semifinalist Wilson Reis (mix of dec/sub/tko)

Have a hunch? Head to Tapology and enter your own picks and commentary, and track how you do.

http://www.tapology.com/2010/06/may-mma-buzz-rankings-quinton-jackson-brings-the-buzz/

Quinton “Rampage” Jackson rode the wave of publicity surrounding his feud with UFC 114 opponent Rashad Evans to the top of the MMA fighter buzz rankings in May. Jackson, who has increasingly been generating mainstream media attention for his activities on and off the set of the upcoming A-Team movie, was the driving force behind turning UFC into a blockbuster night of business for the UFC. His opponent, the victorious Rashad Evans, rose 24 spots to sixth overall, but couldn’t touch the level of intense interest surrounding Jackson. Kimbo Slice rose to second place following his UFC 113 defeat to Matt Mitrione, while Fedor Emelianenko dropped a spot to third place overall. Full top 50 list below.

Tapology’s Buzz Rankings measure fan interest in individual MMA fighters based on online searches and pageviews for information about each athlete. The rankings are not a measure of a fighter’s skill or competitive standing within their division, but rather how much activity or “buzz” surrounds them (positive or negative).

Top 50 Overall Buzz Rankings for recent months:
- April 2010 (#1 Rank: Anderson Silva)
- March 2010 (#1 Rank: Brock Lesnar)
- February 2010 (#1 Rank: Fedor Emelianenko)

May Rank	Fighter	Change From Last Month
1	Quinton “Rampage” Jackson	Up 11
2	Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson	Up 4
3	Fedor Emelianenko	Down 1
4	Lyoto Machida	Up 7
5	Mauricio “Shogun” Rua	Up 24
6	Rashad Evans	Up 24
7	Brock Lesnar	Down 4
8	Anderson Silva	Down 7
9	Alistair Overeem	Up 16
10	Paul Daley	Up 38
11	Mariusz Pudzianowski	Up 22
12	Josh Koscheck	Up 33
13	Tito Ortiz	Down 9
14	Chuck Liddell	Down 7
15	Tim Sylvia	Up 19
16	Georges St. Pierre	Down 11
17	Randy Couture	Down 7
18	Matt Mitrione	Up 28
19	Shane Carwin	Down 2
20	Forrest Griffin	Up 3
21	Wanderlei Silva	Up 3
22	Roy Nelson	Up 6
23	Frank Mir	Up 3
24	Andrei Arlovski	Up 14
25	Fabricio Werdum	Up 17
26	Ken Shamrock	Up 1
27	Michael Bisping	Up 31
28	Chael Sonnen	Down 7
29	Diego Sanchez	Up 20
30	Bobby Lashley	Up 1
31	Brett Rogers	Up 24
32	Todd Duffee	Up 85
33	Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic	Up 7
34	Junior Dos Santos	Up 22
35	Dan Miller	Up 48
36	BJ Penn	Down 28
37	Jason Brilz	Up 510
38	Matt Hughes	Down 23
39	Rich Franklin	Down 3
40	Jon Jones	Up 13
41	Vitor Belfort	Down 6
42	Thiago Silva	Up 27
43	Nick Diaz	Down 4
44	Dan Henderson	Down 30
45	Gina Carano	Down 2
46	John Hathaway	Up 69
47	Bob Sapp	Up 5
48	Mark Coleman	Up 20
49	Cain Velasquez	Down 2
50	Dan Hardy	No Change

 

Dropped out of Top 50:
Jake Shields (#52), Urijah Faber (#61), Jason Miller (#62), Frankie Edgar (#82), Gegard Mousasi (#84), Kenny Florian (#88), Demian Maia (#90), Renzo Gracie (#96), Muhammed Lawal (#107), Jose Aldo (#126), Shinya Aoki (#129)

http://www.tapology.com/2010/05/ufc-114-pay-per-view-buy-prediction-rampage-set-to-deliver/

What's up BloodyElbow.  I added in the comparison of the pre-fight prediction vs the actual outcomes, since people had been asking about them.  Also, I wouldn't be surprised to see this event do well over 705,000, but am going to stick with what the online buzz data is saying.  Should be an awesome event.

The main event of UFC 114 is the long-anticipated showdown between Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and “Sugar” Rashad Evans, a bout that has been brewing for over a year and is set to deliver a strong night of business for the UFC. The pair of light heavyweights, who coached and trash-talked opposite each other on the tenth season of the Ultimate Fighter, will headline an event that lost its co-main event a few weeks ago when Forrest Griffin had to pull out of a fight against Antonio Rogerio Nogueira. Despite the canceled bout, Rampage Jackson in particular is carrying and bringing in a ton of buzz for the event. Taking all of the numbers into account, Tapology’s pre-fight prediction for UFC 114 pay per view buys is 705,000. Breakdown below.

Tapology translates the volume of online interest for the main and co-main event fighters into an absolute “buzz score” in order to model a pay per view forecast. The higher each individual fighter’s buzz score, the more people who have been searching and reading about that fighter online in the days leading up to the event.

Former light heavyweight champion Quinton Jackson is drawing by far the most fan buzz for the event, nearly twice that of his opponent and also former light heavyweight champion, Rashad Evans. The 39.0 buzz score for Jackson is the highest for any single fighter since UFC 104 and Lyoto Machida. The co-main event between Michael Bisping and Dan Miller adds a little bit of buzz to the event, and certainly will help draw interest in the United Kingdom, but overall doesn’t do much.

Fighter	Pre-Fight Buzz Score
Quinton Jackson	39.0
Rashad Evans	23.5
Michael Bisping	9.4
Dan Miller	8.1
Total	80.0

The combined score for the four main and co-main event fighters is 80.0, just above the level reached for UFC 111 featuring Georges St. Pierre defending his belt against Dan Hardy. That card came in with an estimated 770,000 pay per view buys according to trending estimates from the Wrestling Observer newsletter, slightly outperforming Tapology’s pre-fight estimate of 650,000. The combined buzz score for UFC 114 is slightly higher, and therefore could also exceed expectations, however the lack of a title on the line and no strong co-main event may hurt.

As a result, when we plug a score of 80.0 into the model, we get an estimate of 705,000 pay per view buys, and an expected excellent night of business for the UFC.

Event	Main & Co-Main Event Pre-Fight Buzz Score	Tapology Pre-Fight Forecast	Reported Actual Pay Per View Buys
UFC 100	156.9		1,600,000
UFC 101	83.1		900,000
UFC 102	46.6		435,000
UFC 103	56.2		375,000
UFC 104	81.1	730,000	500,000
UFC 106	63.9	510,000	375,000
UFC 107	67.5	540,000	620,000
UFC 108	43.4	275,000	300,000
UFC 109	46.6	315,000	285,000
UFC 110	50.1	355,000	240,000
UFC 111	77.3	650,000	770,000
UFC 112	58.1	440,000	500,000
UFC 113	62.2	490,000	520,000 (trending estimate)
UFC 114	80.0	705,000

Post-event pay per view numbers are based off of the great analysis that can be found at MMAPayout.com as well as the Wrestling Observer newsletter.

http://www.tapology.com/2010/05/april-mma-buzz-rankings-anderson-silva-catches-attention/

Anderson Silva generated a wave of MMA fan buzz both preceding and subsequent to his UFC 112 main event title defense against Demian Maia, and became the most focused upon fighter of the month. The middleweight champion’s antic-laden and arguably disrespectful in-ring behavior against an over-matched opponent led to furious fans and UFC officials and mountains of press coverage. Falling from the top spot was heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar, now two months out from his comeback title defense against Shane Carwin. Big movers in the month include Tito Ortiz and his return to the Ultimate Fighter TV series, and both Jose Aldo and Urijah Faber who main-evented the WEC’s first ever pay per view event. Top fighters including Jon Jones, Junior Dos Santos, and Takanori Gomi were unable to hold onto fan interest in the month following their last bouts and fell from the top 50. Full list below.

Tapology’s Buzz Rankings measure fan interest in individual MMA fighters based on online searches and pageviews for information about each athlete. The rankings are not a measure of a fighter’s skill or competitive standing within their division, but rather how much activity or “buzz” surrounds them (positive or negative).

Top 50 Overall Buzz Rankings for recent months:
- March 2010 (#1 Rank: Brock Lesnar)
- February 2010 (#1 Rank: Fedor Emelianenko)
- January 2010 (#1 Rank: Brock Lesnar)

April Rank	Fighter	Change From Last Month
1	Anderson Silva	Up 6
2	Fedor Emelianenko	Up 1
3	Brock Lesnar	Down 2
4	Tito Ortiz	Up 11
5	Georges St. Pierre	Down 3
6	Kevin Ferguson	Up 2
7	Chuck Liddell	Up 6
8	Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson	Up 9
9	Urijah Faber	Up 30
10	Randy Couture	No Change
11	Lyoto Machida	Up 3
12	Quinton “Rampage” Jackson	Down 1
13	Jose Aldo	Up 58
14	Dan Henderson	Up 22
15	Matt Hughes	Up 7
16	Jake Shields	Up 45
17	Shane Carwin	Down 13
18	Renzo Gracie	Up 10
19	Jason Miller	Up 33
20	Demian Maia	Up 9
21	Chael Sonnen	Up 66
22	Frankie Edgar	Up 61
23	Forrest Griffin	Up 4
24	Wanderlei Silva	Down 4
25	Alistair Overeem	Down 4
26	Frank Mir	Down 20
27	Ken Shamrock	Down 3
28	Roy Nelson	Up 6
29	Mauricio “Shogun” Rua	Up 6
30	Rashad Evans	Down 7
31	Bobby Lashley	Down 13
32	Gegard Mousasi	Up 12
33	Mariusz Pudzianowski	New
34	Tim Sylvia	Down 15
35	Vitor Belfort	Up 7
36	Rich Franklin	Up 13
37	Shinya Aoki	Up 13
38	Andrei Arlovski	Down 7
39	Nick Diaz	Up 12
40	Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic	Up 28
41	Muhammed Lawal	Up 53
42	Fabricio Werdum	Up 3
43	Gina Carano	Down 6
44	Kenny Florian	Up 16
45	Josh Koscheck	Down 5
46	Matt Mitrione	No Change
47	Cain Velasquez	Down 22
48	Paul Daley	Up 9
49	Diego Sanchez	Down 1
50	Dan Hardy	Down 45

 

Dropped out of Top 50:
Bob Sapp (#52), Jon Jones (#53), Junior Dos Santos (#56), Takanori Gomi (#59), Thiago Alves (#66), Matt Serra (#67), Jon Fitch (#75), Brandon Vera (#79), Cheick Kongo (#80), Jens Pulver (#84), Gabriel Gonzaga (#98)

http://www.tapology.com/2010/05/ufc-113-pay-per-view-buy-prediction-less-buzz-than-machida-rua-1/

 

The main event of UFC 113 is the long-anticipated rematch of the Lyoto Machida vs Mauricio “Shogun” Rua title fight from October of last year at UFC 104. That fight, which saw the champion Machida retain his light heavyweight belt in a close and somewhat controversial decision, drew an enormous amount of fan buzz and a healthy pay per view buyrate of 500,000. Tonight’s rematch is pulling in notably less fan buzz than that first encounter, yet the number of pay per view buys is expected to be similar. Taking all of the numbers into account, Tapology’s pre-fight prediction for UFC 113 pay per view buys is 490,000. Breakdown below.

Tapology translates the volume of online interest for the main and co-main event fighters into an absolute “buzz score” in order to model a pay per view forecast. The higher each individual fighter’s buzz score, the more people who have been searching and reading about that fighter online in the days leading up to the event.

Light heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida defends his belt in the main event, and is drawing by far the most fan buzz for the event, exactly twice that of the challenger Mauricio Rua. While the 28.2 score for Machida is healthy and impressive, and in line with what Georges St-Pierre received for his UFC 111 title defense, it is notably down from a buzz score of 39.2 when Machida last fought Rua at UFC 104. Separately, however, the co-main event between Paul Daley and Josh Koscheck is not providing that much additional punch for the card, and is less than the co-main event buzz from UFC 111 (Mir/Cawin) and UFC 112 (Penn/Edgar).

Fighter	Pre-Fight Buzz Score
Lyoto Machida	28.2
Shogun Rua	14.1
Paul Daley	9.7
Josh Koscheck	10.2
Total	62.2

 

The combined score for the four main and co-main event fighters is 62.2, almost exactly in line with the score from last month’s UFC 112 event in Abu Dhabi. That card came in with an estimated 500,000 pay per view buys according to trending estimates from the Wrestling Observer newsletter, slightly outperforming Tapology’s pre-fight estimate of 440,000. The combined buzz score for UFC 104 (Machida-Rua 1) was 81.1 and came in with a below expected 500,000 buys in comparison to the huge level of buzz. The amount of buzz and activity surrounding UFC 104 was something of an oddity, and it turned out to be a poor predictor of pay per view sales. That should not be the case with UFC 113, with Machida’s level of buzz coming back down to normal levels.

As a result, when we plug a score of 62.2 into the model, we get an estimate of 490,000 pay per view buys, a good night’s business for the UFC and in line with both the first Machida-Rua fight as well as the most recent UFC 112 card.

Event	Main & Co-Main Event Pre-Fight Buzz Score	Reported/Estimated Pay Per View Buys
UFC 100	156.9	1,600,000
UFC 101	83.1	900,000
UFC 102	46.6	435,000
UFC 103	56.2	375,000
UFC 104	81.1	500,000
UFC 106	63.9	375,000
UFC 107	67.5	620,000
UFC 108	43.4	300,000
UFC 109	46.6	285,000
UFC 110	50.1	240,000
UFC 111	77.3	770,000
UFC 112	58.1	500,000 (trending estimate)
UFC 113	62.2	490,000 (pre-fight prediction)

 

Post-event pay per view numbers are based off of the great analysis that can be found at MMAPayout.com as well as the Wrestling Observer newsletter.

http://www.tapology.com/2010/04/wec-48-pay-per-view-buy-prediction-exceeding-expectations/

WEC 48 represents the promotion’s first foray into the world of Pay Per View, with observers eagerly anticipating how the event performs from a business perspective. Some have speculated as low as 50,000 pay per view buys, while UFC president Dana White has offered up more optimistic projections in the neighborhood of 150,000. Tapology, using pre-fight online interest and buzz as a tool for forecasting pay per view results, is similarly without any historical WEC numbers to draw from in order to help make a prediction. Despite this, the online interest in WEC 48 has been very strong, leading us to make a bold prediction that the event will exceed all expectations and settle around 240,000 buys. We could have forecast even higher, but tried to remain conservative and discounted our projection. Breakdown below.

Tapology translates the volume of online interest for the main and co-main event fighters into an absolute “buzz score” in order to model a pay per view forecast. The higher each individual fighter’s buzz score, the more people who have been searching and reading about that fighter online in the days leading up to the event.

Featherweight champion Jose Aldo headlines the card by defending his belt against the most popular fighter in the WEC, Urijah Faber. While there is also a co-main event title fight in the lightweight division, it is the Faber/Aldo main event that is driving virtually all of the interest in this card. Faber, the charismatic long-time poster boy for the WEC, is exceeding the interest being generated for Jose Aldo by a decent margin, and for comparison purposes is generating far more interest than BJ Penn did for UFC 112, and nearly as much as Anderson Silva. Indeed, it is singularly the Faber/Aldo fight that will make or break this card, with casual fans almost completely unaware of the other bouts taking place.

Fighter	Pre-Fight Buzz Score
Urijah Faber	20.4
Jose Aldo	16.9
Ben Henderson	5.0
Donald Cerrone	3.4
Total	45.7

 

The combined score for the four main and co-main event fighters is 45.7, directly in line with the levels seen for UFC’s 108 and 109. Those cards featured main events of Rashad Evans vs Thiago Silva and Randy Couture vs Mark Coleman, and both did just around 300,000 PPV buys. Neither fight was a title fight, and neither fight had the significance within its weight class as does Urijah Faber vs Jose Aldo, which would suggest that a similar number of serious fans will gladly order this event. The big unknown, of course, is what the absence of strong UFC branding will mean as far as pulling in borderline serious fans and casuals. The presence of the regular UFC marketing machine including Dana White, Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg, and Spike TV prelims may be enough to make the branding a non-issue, or at least blurred enough such that most consumers simply assume it is a regular UFC event like any other.

To be conservative and not throw out a pay per view prediction that completely disregards the WEC brand risk, Tapology is discounting our model’s prediction somewhat, and forecasting a slightly more down-to-earth figure in the neighborhood of 240,000 buys. A result anywhere near this level would be a huge win for the WEC and Zuffa, and simply eclipsing Dana White’s much lower 150,000 figure would be considered a success. We expect that to happen, plus room for plenty of upside.

Event	Main & Co-Main Event Pre-Fight Buzz Score	Reported/Estimated Pay Per View Buys
UFC 100	156.9	1,600,000
UFC 101	83.1	900,000
UFC 102	46.6	435,000
UFC 103	56.2	375,000
UFC 104	81.1	500,000
UFC 106	63.9	375,000
UFC 107	67.5	620,000
UFC 108	43.4	300,000
UFC 109	46.6	285,000
UFC 110	50.1	240,000
UFC 111	77.3	770,000 (trending estimate)
UFC 112	58.1	500,000 (trending estimate)
WEC 48	45.7	240,000 (pre-fight forecast)

 

Post-event pay per view numbers are based off of the great analysis that can be found at MMAPayout.com as well as the Wrestling Observer newsletter.

http://www.tapology.com/2010/04/bellator-announces-huerta-vs-curran-vanier-vs-imada-for-boston/

At today’s press conference for the upcoming Bellator 17 show to be held on May 6th at Boston’s Citi Performing Arts Center’s Wang Theatre, the promotion announced the pairings for the semi-final round of its season two lightweight tournament. Former UFC stand-out Roger Huerta will be facing off against the 10-3 Pat Curran, while the 8-2 Carey Vanier will face season one finalist Toby Imada. Tapology’s Steven Kelliher was on hand at the press conference to learn of the matchups and how the organization is setting up its plans for the lightweight division. Headlining the Boston card will be a non-title bout between season one champion Eddie Alvarez and Josh Neer, who signed with Bellator following a run of five fights in the UFC. The winner of the lightweight tournament is expected to challenge Alvarez for the lightweight title later this year.

http://www.tapology.com/2010/04/ufc-112-pay-per-view-buy-prediction-healthy-follow-up-to-111/

 

UFC 111 in New Jersey broke the trend of lackluster pay per views for the UFC with an estimated 770,000 buys. While Saturday’s UFC 112 in Abu Dhabi will not approach those levels, it is still poised to deliver a healthy follow-up on the heels of that card. With two title fights and notably strong fan interest in middleweight champion Anderson Silva, there is more buzz surrounding UFC 112 than was the case for the under-performing UFC 108, 109, or 110. Taking all of the numbers into account, Tapology’s pre-fight prediction for UFC 112 pay per view buys is 440,000. Breakdown below.

Tapology translates the volume of online interest for the main and co-main event fighters into an absolute “buzz score” in order to model a pay per view forecast. The higher each individual fighter’s buzz score, the more people who have been searching and reading about that fighter online in the days leading up to the event.

Middleweight champion Anderson Silva headlines the event by defending his belt against Demian Maia, and it is in fact those two who are generating the majority of interest for the card. While there have been questions about pound-for-pound contender Silva’s drawing power among casual fans, his years of dominating performances may finally be paying off. Silva is generating twice the buzz as fellow title-holder BJ Penn, who defends his lightweight belt against Frankie Edgar in the co-main event. While Penn has been a pay per view darling in his last few outings, the UFC 112 marketing machine has focused more on Silva, perhaps leading to this disparity in buzz between the fighters.

Fighter	Pre-Fight Buzz Score
BJ Penn	12.3
Frankie Edgar	6.3
Anderson Silva	25.5
Demian Maia	14.0
Total	58.1

 

The combined score for the four main and co-main event fighters is 58.1, 24% lower than the 77.3 score seen for the UFC 111 event featuring Georges St-Pierre against Dan Hardy. That card came in with an estimated 770,000 pay per view buys according to trending estimates from the Wrestling Observer newsletter. That card slightly outperformed Tapology’s pre-fight estimate of 650,000, and an argument can be made for momentum and carry-over interest moving from one UFC event to the next. At the same time, internationally held pay per view events that air in prime time in the U.S. on tape delay have historically not been the greatest performers.

As a result, when we plug a score of 58.1 into the model, we get an estimate of 440,000 pay per view buys, a big dip from UFC 111 levels, but still a solid performance for a card where maximizing pay per view sales has probably taken a back seat to operational execution and logistics in a new expansion market for the UFC.

Event	Main & Co-Main Event Pre-Fight Buzz Score	Reported/Estimated Pay Per View Buys
UFC 100	156.9	1,600,000
UFC 101	83.1	900,000
UFC 102	46.6	435,000
UFC 103	56.2	375,000
UFC 104	81.1	500,000
UFC 106	63.9	375,000
UFC 107	67.5	620,000
UFC 108	43.4	300,000
UFC 109	46.6	285,000
UFC 110	50.1	240,000
UFC 111	77.3	770,000 (trending estimate)
UFC 112	58.1	440,000 (pre-fight forecast)

 

Post-event pay per view numbers are based off of the great analysis that can be found at MMAPayout.com as well as the Wrestling Observer newsletter.

http://www.tapology.com/2010/03/ufc-111-pay-per-view-buy-prediction-shot-in-arm-for-zuffa/

The first three UFC pay per view events of 2010 have delivered underwhelming buy-rates, but UFC 111 is set to break that trend. A main event title fight featuring one of the organizations biggest stars, Georges St-Pierre, plus an intriguing heavyweight co-main event are generating a significantly increased level of fan interest and attention as compared to prior events, UFC 108, 109, and 110. The amount of fan interest in the last few days leading up to the event has reached a level not seen since UFC 101 and UFC 104 in late 2009. Taking all of the numbers into account, Tapology’s pre-fight prediction for UFC 111 pay per view buys is 650,000. Breakdown below.

Tapology translates the volume of online interest for the main and co-main event fighters into an absolute “buzz score” in order to model a pay per view forecast. The higher each individual fighter’s buzz score, the more people who have been searching and reading about that fighter online in the days leading up to the event.

Welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre defends his belt against Dan Hardy in what is clearly the headlining fight from an online buzz perspective. St-Pierre’s pre-fight online buzz score of 28.2 is the highest for any fighter since Tito Ortiz’s 30.6 at UFC 106. While many question if Hardy is a legitimate challenge for St-Pierre, his pre-fight score of 21 suggests that plenty of fans are bought in and intrigued by the matchup. The Shane Carwin vs Frank Mir co-main event is also delivering healthy interest, single-handedly rivaling the levels seen for recent main event fights.

Fighter	Pre-Fight Buzz Score
Georges St. Pierre	28.2
Dan Hardy	21
Shane Carwin	13.9
Frank Mir	14.2
Total	77.3

 

The combined score for the four main and co-main event fighters is 77.3, 54% higher than the 50.1 score seen for the UFC 110 event featuring Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira against Cain Velasquez. That card came in with an estimated 240,000 pay per view buys according to trending estimates from the Wrestling Observer newsletter. While that and other recent events are pulling the buy-rate forecasting model lower, the strong performance of events like UFC 101 and UFC 107 still help prop up the numbers.

As a result, when we plug a score of 77.3 into the model, we get an estimate of 650,000 pay per view buys, well above UFC 110’s level and setting the stage for what could be a very strong Spring and Summer period for the UFC.

Event	Main & Co-Main Event Pre-Fight Buzz Score	Reported/Estimated Pay Per View Buys
UFC 100	156.9	1,600,000
UFC 101	83.1	900,000
UFC 102	46.6	435,000
UFC 103	56.2	375,000
UFC 104	81.1	500,000
UFC 106	63.9	375,000
UFC 107	67.5	620,000
UFC 108	43.4	300,000
UFC 109	46.6	285,000 (trending estimate)
UFC 110	50.1	240,000 (trending estimate)
UFC 111	77.3	650,000 (pre-fight forecast)

 

Post-event pay per view numbers are based off of the great analysis that can be found at MMAPayout.com as well as the Wrestling Observer newsletter.

http://www.tapology.com/2010/03/february-mma-buzz-rankings-fedor-back-on-top/

Fedor Emelianenko inched above Brock Lesnar to become the most buzzed about MMA fighter in the month of February, returning to the spot that the Russian heavyweight last held in November. Emelianenko has increasingly become a source of intrigue and curiosity for casual MMA fans, as evidenced by his first-place ranking two months subsequent to his most recent bout. Cain Velasquez rose 52 spots to fifth in the buzz rankings after his breakout performance at UFC 110 in Australia. Also making a big move was UFC middleweight Chael Sonnen, who rose 65 spots to 16th after scoring a major upset against Nate Marquardt at UFC 109, and Demian Maia who rose 79 spots following his win over Dan Miller. 15 fighters fell from the top 50 list after having been there in January.

Tapology’s Buzz Rankings measure fan interest in individual MMA fighters based on online searches and pageviews for information about each athlete. The rankings are not a measure of a fighter’s skill or competitive standing within their division, but rather how much activity or “buzz” surrounds them (positive or negative).

Top 50 Overall Buzz Rankings for recent months:
- January 2010 (#1 Rank: Brock Lesnar)
- December 2009 (#1 Rank: Kimbo Slice)
- November 2009 (#1 Rank: Fedor Emelianenko)

 

February Rank	Fighter	January to February Change
1	Fedor Emelianenko	Up 1
2	Brock Lesnar	Down 1
3	Randy Couture	Up 5
4	Anderson Silva	No Change
5	Cain Velasquez	Up 52
6	Wanderlei Silva	Up 11
7	Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson	No Change
8	Herschel Walker	Down 3
9	Mark Coleman	Up 5
10	Quinton “Rampage” Jackson	Down 7
11	Bobby Lashley	Down 5
12	Frank Mir	Up 1
13	Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic	Up 14
14	Georges St. Pierre	Down 3
15	Chuck Liddell	Down 3
16	Chael Sonnen	Up 65
17	Lyoto Machida	Down 7
18	Tito Ortiz	Down 2
19	Demian Maia	Up 79
20	Ken Shamrock	Down 5
21	Michael Bisping	Up 32
22	Vitor Belfort	No Change
23	Forrest Griffin	Down 2
24	Keith Jardine	Up 32
25	Andrei Arlovski	Down 2
26	Shane Carwin	Up 6
27	BJ Penn	Down 9
28	Renzo Gracie	Up 14
29	Dan Henderson	Up 5
30	Alistair Overeem	Down 10
31	Mauricio “Shogun” Rua	Down 2
32	Rashad Evans	Down 23
33	Dan Hardy	Down 3
34	George Sotiropoulos	Up 91
35	Matt Hughes	Down 4
36	Nate Marquardt	Up 25
37	Bob Sapp	Down 2
38	Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira	Up 52
39	Gina Carano	Down 11
40	Ryan Bader	Up 66
41	Matt Serra	Up 13
42	Paulo Thiago	Up 57
43	Tim Sylvia	Up 9
44	Nick Diaz	Down 18
45	Gegard Mousasi	Down 12
46	Fabricio Werdum	Down 2
47	Anthony Perosh	Up 578
48	Brandon Vera	Up 14
49	Rich Franklin	Up 2
50	Junior Dos Santos	Down 25

 

Dropped out of Top 50:
Roy Nelson (#51), Diego Sanchez (#54), Cung Le (#57), Josh Koscheck (#58), Jason Miller (#59), Takanori Gomi (#60), Wes Sims (#72), Thiago Silva (#73), Paul Daley (#77), Urijah Faber (#81), Shinya Aoki (#84), Frankie Edgar (#94), C.B. Dollaway (#103), Gilbert Yvel (#122), Gray Maynard (#140)

No championship titles are on the line at UFC 110, but a lineup of competitive and compelling bouts looks poised to deliver marginally better pay per view performance than the prior to UFC events. While UFC 108 and UFC 109 had main events that many fans questioned the relevance of, UFC 110’s main and co-main event are meaningful if not blockbuster matchups that have drawn an increase in fan interest. The build-up of online interest for UFC 110 is about 15% higher than was the case for UFC 108, which delivered an estimated 300,000 buys a month ago (actual PPV buyrate information for UFC 109 has not been released yet, but Tapology’s pre-fight forecast was 315,000). This increased online interest suggests a PPV buy rate for UFC 110 in the neighborhood of 355,000. Breakdown below.

Tapology translates the volume of online interest for the main and co-main event fighters into an absolute “buzz score” in order to model a pay per view forecast. The higher each individual fighter’s buzz score, the more people who have been searching and reading about that fighter online in the days leading up to the event.

Heavyweights Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Cain Velasquez face off in a critical divisional bout that could determine the next challenger for Brock Lesnar’s belt, and online interest for Nogueira in particular has been strong in the days leading up to the event. Even stronger, however, has been the flood of interest in former Pride champion Wanderlei Silva’s return to the cage and 185 pound weight class debut. Silva and his war of words with British opponent Michael Bisping have added the necessary reinforcement to a card that wasn’t quite strong enough with just its main event.

Fighter	Pre-Fight Buzz Score
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira	14.8
Cain Velasquez	10.7
Wanderlei Silva	15.4
Michael Bisping	9.2
Total	50.1

 

The combined score for the four main and co-main event fighters is 50.1, 15% higher than the 43.4 score seen for the UFC 108 event featuring Rashad Evans and Thiago Silva. That card came in with an estimated 275,000-300,000 pay per view buys according to early estimates, which is directly in line with Tapology’s pre-fight forecast of 275,000. Early February’s UFC 109 event with Randy Couture and Mark Coleman clocked in with a buzz score of 46.6, leading Tapology to predict 315,000 PPV buys, however results for the event have not yet been released and therefore were not incorporated into the model for predicting UFC 110’s buyrate.

As a result, when we plug a score of 50.1 into the model, we get an estimate of 355,000 pay per view buys, a healthy amount above UFC 108’s level and hopefully bridging the gap until the expected blockbuster UFC 111 card arrives in March.

Event	Main & Co-Main Event Pre-Fight Buzz Score	Reported/Estimated Pay Per View Buys
UFC 100	156.9	1,600,000
UFC 101	83.1	900,000
UFC 102	46.6	435,000
UFC 103	56.2	375,000
UFC 104	81.1	500,000
UFC 106	63.9	375,000
UFC 107	67.5	620,000
UFC 108	43.4	300,000
UFC 109	46.6	315,000 (pre-fight forecast)
UFC 110	50.1	355,000 (pre-fight forecast)

 

Post-event pay per view numbers are based off of the great analysis that can be found at MMAPayout.com which in turn frequently source the reporting of the Wrestling Observer newsletter.

 

http://www.tapology.com/2010/02/ufc-110-pay-per-view-buy-prediction-bump-from-108-109/

Brock Lesnar announced in mid-January that he would soon be returning to active MMA competition following a battle outside of the cage against diverticulitis. Without delay, Lesnar became the most buzzed about fighter in the sport for the month, knocking Kimbo Slice from his December perch. While Lesnar’s return date remains to-be-determined, the bout will undoubtedly fuel one of the biggest UFC events of the year. The second most notable MMA buzz activity in January revolved around former NFL player Herschel Walker’s fighting debut. Walker generated the 5th most fan interest in the sport, just one spot ahead of fellow heavyweight Bobby Lashley, who also fought on the Strikeforce Miami card.

The Buzz Rankings measure fan interest in individual MMA fighters based on online searches and pageviews for information about each athlete. The rankings are not a measure of a fighter’s skill or competitive standing within their division, but rather how much activity or “buzz” surrounds them (positive or negative).

Top 50 Overall Buzz Rankings for recent months:
- December 2009 (#1 Rank: Kimbo Slice)
- November 2009 (#1 Rank: Fedor Emelianenko)
- October 2009 (#1 Rank: Lyoto Machida)
- September 2009 (#1 Rank: Kimbo Slice)

January Rank	Fighter	December to January Change
1	Brock Lesnar	Up 3
2	Fedor Emelianenko	Up 4
3	Quinton “Rampage” Jackson	Up 9
4	Anderson Silva	Up 11
5	Herschel Walker	New
6	Bobby Lashley	Up 13
7	Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson	Down 6
8	Randy Couture	Up 19
9	Rashad Evans	Up 5
10	Lyoto Machida	Up 6
11	Georges St. Pierre	Up 2
12	Chuck Liddell	Up 6
13	Frank Mir	Down 8
14	Mark Coleman	Up 53
15	Ken Shamrock	Up 36
16	Tito Ortiz	Up 4
17	Wanderlei Silva	Up 23
18	BJ Penn	Down 16
19	Thiago Silva	Up 2
20	Alistair Overeem	Up 9
21	Forrest Griffin	Up 10
22	Vitor Belfort	Up 23
23	Andrei Arlovski	Up 16
24	Paul Daley	Up 56
25	Junior Dos Santos	Up 37
26	Nick Diaz	Up 23
27	Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic	Up 77
28	Gina Carano	Up 16
29	Mauricio “Shogun” Rua	Up 9
30	Dan Hardy	No Change
31	Matt Hughes	Down 3
32	Shane Carwin	Up 2
33	Gegard Mousasi	Up 4
34	Dan Henderson	Down 9
35	Bob Sapp	Up 23
36	Shinya Aoki	Up 17
37	Diego Sanchez	Down 34
38	Urijah Faber	Up 33
39	C.B. Dollaway	Up 283
40	Takanori Gomi	Up 142
41	Gray Maynard	Up 91
42	Renzo Gracie	Up 1
43	Cung Le	Down 32
44	Fabricio Werdum	Up 37
45	Roy Nelson	Down 37
46	Jason Miller	Up 2
47	Wes Sims	Up 60
48	Gilbert Yvel	Down 13
49	Frankie Edgar	Up 119
50	Josh Koscheck	Down 14

 

Dropped out of Top 50:
Keith Jardine (#56), Jon Jones (#58), Houston Alexander (#68), Clay Guida (#74), Cheick Kongo (#75), Jon Fitch (#76), Kenny Florian (#85), Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira (#90), Matt Mitrione (#101), Stefan Struve (#117), Brendan Schaub (#123), Matt Hamill (#127), Marcus Jones (#133), Scott Smith (#134), Muhammed Lawal (#152)

 

http://www.tapology.com/2010/02/january-mma-buzz-rankings-brock-lesnars-recovery/

The latest PPV prediction is up (original version).

 

Randy Couture has long been one of the UFC’s most popular fighters and has been the headliner for the last six UFC events he has been a part of. While it is uncertain if he will contend for another title at this point in his incredible career, the UFC is still comfortable in his ability to deliver as a main event draw. Couture takes on fellow veteran and hall-of-famer Mark Coleman in the main event of UFC 109 in a showdown that appears poised to deliver just enough fan interest and buzz to carry the UFC forward towards its blockbuster March and April schedule. The build-up of online interest surrounding UFC 109 is slightly above what took place for UFC 108, which delivered an estimated 300,000 buys a month ago. Online activity from the past few days suggests a buy rate for UFC 109 in the neighborhood of 315,000. Breakdown below.

Tapology translates the volume of online interest for the main and co-main event fighters into an absolute “buzz score” in order to model a pay per view forecast. The higher each individual fighter’s buzz score, the more people who have been searching and reading about that fighter online in the days leading up to the event.

Randy Couture and Mark Coleman both lead the way with pre-fight buzz scores of 14.8, which barely edges out the level of buzz that had been generated by Rashad Evans and Thiago Silva for UFC 108 (scores of 13.0 and 10.8), but falls well behind other recent main event participants including Diego Sanchez and Tito Ortiz (scores of 27.3 and 30.6, roughly twice the online buzz). UFC 109’s co-main event fighters Nate Marquardt and Chael Sonnen add a little punch, with Chael Sonnen in particular parlaying his controversial pre-fight interviews into more fan interest. As with UFC 108 before it, the card ultimately lacks a true buzz for any particular fight as is necessary for big pay per view sales among casual fans.

 

Fighter	Pre-Fight Buzz Score
Mark Coleman	14.8
Randy Couture	14.8
Nate Marquardt	7.2
Chael Sonnen	9.8
Total	46.6

 

The combined score for the four main and co-main event fighters is 46.6, just above the 43.4 score seen for the UFC 108 event featuring Rashad Evans and Thiago Silva. That card came in with an estimated 275,000-300,000 pay per view buys according to early estimates, which is directly in line with Tapology’s pre-fight forecast of 275,000. Last August’s UFC 102 event (also featuring Randy Couture) had an identical pre-fight score of 46.6 and managed to deliver over 400,000 buys, which is a sign of hope for a surprisingly strong night for the UFC. While UFC 102 was coming on the heels of blockbuster UFC 100 and UFC 101 events, however, UFC 109 has no such spillover momentum.

As a result, when we plug a score of 46.6 into the model, we get an estimate of 315,000 pay per view buys, just above UFC 108’s level and holding on the lower end of pay per view performance for the last year in the UFC.

 

Event	Main & Co-Main Event Pre-Fight Buzz Score	Reported/Estimated Pay Per View Buys
UFC 100	156.9	1,600,000
UFC 101	83.1	900,000
UFC 102	46.6	435,000
UFC 103	56.2	375,000
UFC 104	81.1	500,000
UFC 106	63.9	375,000
UFC 107	67.5	620,000
UFC 108	43.4	300,000
UFC 109	46.6	315,000 (pre-fight forecast)

 

 

Post-event pay per view numbers are based off of the great analysis that can be found at MMAPayout.com, which in turn frequently source the reporting of the Wrestling Observer newsletter.

Tapology’s buzz rankings are a measure of fan interest and activity. Tapology uses data from Compete, Inc. to measure the level of internet users checking out over 800 of the biggest names in MMA. Activity is aggregated across multiple websites and represents United States fans only.

I'm a fan.  Lawal brings personality and confidence to the ring... makes the sport exciting even if it can be a little polarizing for the fans.

Here's some of the best stuff from a recent interview between King Mo and Steven Kelliher:

Tapology: I wanted to talk about your last fight against Mike Whitehead. You knocked him out pretty early into the first round, so how did you feel about your performance overall?

Lawal: I felt great. I knew I was going to win. The funny thing about this fight was before I fought him, everybody was saying he was going to be my toughest fight, and now that I beat him, he’s a can now, you know? It’s just funny how MMA fans can be. When he fought Kevin Randleman and “Babalu” he was a really tough guy, but now he’s a can.

I’ve only been training and fighting for a year, so to call these fighters that I’m beating cans is ridiculous because it’s coming from people who have never fought before. They are internet warriors.

Tapology: So if you beat Fedor, do you think they will call him a can?

Lawal: Oh yeah, they’ll be like, ‘oh, I want to see him fight Brock,’ or something like that. It’s never good enough for the fans. People call me cocky, but the thing is I’m not cocky, I’ve just got great training, great coaches, and I’m confident in my skills. I think that people confuse people who are outgoing with people who are cocky or arrogant.

Tapology: How frustrated are you with the fans as of late? Are you trying to forget about it and just focus on the training right now?

Lawal: You know what, I’ve got fans and I’ve got haters; I just want to have a good time and enjoy myself.

Tapology: What are your thoughts on size gaps in MMA overall? How large of an impact do you think it has on the outcome of fights, or does it depend on the circumstances most of the time?

Lawal: Size only matters when you don’t have the proper skill set to defeat your opponent. Hong Man Choi lost to Minowaman because Minowaman had the proper skill set to defeat him. I beat Travis Wiuff and Mike Whitehead because I had the proper skill set to defeat those fighters.

Tapology: As far as your future plans are concerned in terms of weight class, are you definitely planning on dropping back down to light heavyweight for your next fight?

Lawal: Yeah, my last fight was supposed to take place at light heavyweight, but Mike Whitehead wanted the fight to be at heavyweight. Light heavyweight is more of my natural weight class, so I think I’ll stay around there more. I have no problem fighting at heavyweight though because I feel I can beat whomever they put in front of me.

Tapology: I wanted to get your thoughts on the whole Rock Star Energy Drink situation that occurred following your fight, including your fine.

Lawal: Here’s the thing; people don’t know what happened. People are trying to bash me, but people don’t know. The same guy from the commission that told me to calm down was the same guy that got me the Rock Star in the back. I told them I was going to do it in the back when I was getting my hands wrapped. I told them I was going to do a Stone Cold celebration. People knew what I was going to do. Mayhem or somebody gave me that Rock Star and it was shaken up or something, so I just went with it—it started spraying everywhere—I couldn’t control it.

The outer part of the mat got wet. I walked back to my corner and wiped my feet on a towel they had there, but people didn’t see that, they just saw my upper body all wet and thought that I was pouring Rock Star all over the mat.

Tapology: So to your understanding, was the whole fine based on getting the mat wet?

Lawal: I think so. People were saying that Josh Thomson slipped on the mat because of me, but he fought two fights after me so him slipping on the mat because of me makes no sense; they clean the mat after every fight.

Tapology: When would you like to fight next?

Lawal: I would honestly like to fight Mousasi if I had the chance. I’d like to fight Mousasi, and then either Dan [Henderson] or Fedor. Mousasi is a good fighter, but I think I could beat him. Mousasi vs. King Mo would be an exciting fight. Somebody’s going to get stopped, and I’m not planning on it being me. I’m going to train hard, he’s going to train hard, and I just feel we’ll both put on a good show.

Tapology: There are not too many well-known light heavyweights in Strikeforce right now. Do you think there is anyone else above yourself that they could justify giving a title shot to in that division?

Lawal: They could give “Babalu” a rematch. That fight went so quick, so I think if they fought again it would be a different fight. They have Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante as well, but right now it’s all about marketing. An example in the UFC was when Forrest Griffin beat Hector Ramirez, he got Shogun [Rua], and then he was up for a title shot. It’s all about marketability and what the fans want. People know me and people know Mousasi, and we’ll put on a good fight.

Tapology: What do you think it is going to take to beat a guy like Mousasi?

Lawal: I’m just going to do what I do. He’s a good kickboxer, but this is MMA; I’ll be all right. His Jiu-Jitsu off of his back is all right, but it’s not better than Nogueira’s. Let’s put it this way, I train with guys that are better than him in every situation, so I feel like if I can battle with them I’ll run through him.

Tapology: Have you actually spoken with Scott Coker or anyone in Strikeforce about putting this fight together?

Lawal: No, I’m going to wait for them to make the decision. Hopefully Scott Coker, King Coker, will think that it will be a good fight and he’ll put it together.

 

 

Some additional stuff in the full interview.

http://www.tapology.com/2010/01/king-mo-talks-whitehead-wants-mousasi-next/

Kimbo Slice rode the wave of publicity surrounding his Ultimate Fighter 10 Finale bout against Houston Alexander back to the top of the MMA fan buzz rankings in December. Despite losing the reality show and having other contestants receive higher billing, it was without a doubt Kimbo Slice who drove the ratings and interest in the December 5th Spike TV event. With his victory over Alexander, Kimbo will continue to draw overwhelming casual fan curiosity that will help the UFC promote any event he is a part of.

Last month’s top ranked fighter, Fedor Emelianenko, fell five spots to sixth place in the month following his knockout of Brett Rogers. BJ Penn and Diego Sanchez shot to second and third place as a result of their UFC 107 main event title fight, while the inactive Brock Lesnar remains a focal point of fan interest in fourth place in December.

Tapology’s Buzz Rankings measure fan interest in individual MMA fighters based on online searches and pageviews for information about each athlete. The rankings are not a measure of a fighter’s skill or competitive standing within their division, but rather how much activity or “buzz” surrounds them (positive or negative).

Top 50 Overall Buzz Rankings for recent months:
- November 2009 (#1 Rank: Fedor Emelianenko)
- October 2009 (#1 Rank: Lyoto Machida)
- September 2009 (#1 Rank: Kimbo Slice)

 

December 2009 Rankings:

 

December Rank	Fighter	November to December Change
1	Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson	Up 7
2	BJ Penn	Up 50
3	Diego Sanchez	Up 36
4	Brock Lesnar	Down 2
5	Frank Mir	Up 43
6	Fedor Emelianenko	Down 5
7	Houston Alexander	Up 31
8	Roy Nelson	Up 41
9	Brendan Schaub	Up 80
10	Marcus Jones	Up 9
11	Cung Le	Up 13
12	Quinton “Rampage” Jackson	Up 2
13	Georges St. Pierre	Up 19
14	Rashad Evans	Down 1
15	Anderson Silva	Down 9
16	Lyoto Machida	Down 7
17	Jon Jones	Up 84
18	Chuck Liddell	Down 8
19	Bobby Lashley	Down 7
20	Tito Ortiz	Down 17
21	Thiago Silva	Up 13
22	Scott Smith	Up 75
23	Jon Fitch	Up 42
24	Cheick Kongo	Up 57
25	Dan Henderson	Up 12
26	Clay Guida	Up 57
27	Randy Couture	Down 23
28	Matt Hughes	Down 3
29	Alistair Overeem	Down 3
30	Dan Hardy	Down 13
31	Forrest Griffin	Down 26
32	Matt Mitrione	Up 113
33	Kenny Florian	Up 39
34	Shane Carwin	Down 16
35	Gilbert Yvel	Up 274
36	Josh Koscheck	Down 16
37	Gegard Mousasi	Down 16
38	Mauricio “Shogun” Rua	Down 2
39	Andrei Arlovski	Down 4
40	Wanderlei Silva	Down 7
41	Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira	Down 11
42	Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal	Up 138
43	Renzo Gracie	Up 18
44	Gina Carano	Down 3
45	Vitor Belfort	Down 14
46	Stefan Struve	Up 125
47	Keith Jardine	Up 23
48	Jason “Mayhem” Miller	Down 37
49	Nick Diaz	Up 27
50	Matt Hamill	Up 23

Dropped out of Top 50:
Ken Shamrock (#51), Royce Gracie (#61), Cain Velasquez (#63), Antonio Rogerio Nogueira (#65), Brandon Vera (#70), Fabricio Werdum (#81), Tim Sylvia (#82), Jose Aldo (#84), Brett Rogers (#87), Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic (#104), Jake Shields (#111), Michael Bisping (#113), Phil Baroni (#152), Anthony Johnson (#163), Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou (#167), Denis Kang (#224)

Source URL: http://www.tapology.com/2010/01/december-mma-buzz-rankings-kimbo-is-back/

2009 was another breakthrough year for Mixed Martial Arts, and one of the aspects of the sport that continues to intrigue and draw in new fans is that any fighter has a chance to win on any given night, no matter how big a star or a favorite he or she is facing. Over the course of this past year there were a number of stunning upsets that re-shaped divisional standings, crowned new champions, and helped new stars emerge. Tapology has compiled a list of the biggest upsets of the year across all of the major MMA organizations including the UFC, WEC, Strikeforce, Sengoku, and Dream. The top 50 upsets, as defined by oddsmaker’s betting lines, are ranked below.

The upsets are ranked according to oddsmaker betting lines for fights as of the start of the bout. The heavier the betting favorite that went down with a loss, the bigger the upset. The rankings are not based on the opinions of the Tapology staff.

23 of the top 50 upsets came by way of a judge’s decision. 18 were either a KO or TKO, and only 7 were submissions. For good measure, two upsets were decided by way of opponent disqualification: Matt Hamill defeating Jon Jones at the Ultimate Fighter season 10 finale, and Akihiko Mouri defeating Maximo Blanco at Sengoku 8.

24 of the upsets were in the UFC organization, 8 from Dream (including the Dynamite 2009 New Year’s show), 7 were in the WEC, and 7 more were in Sengoku. Rounding out the bottom were 3 upsets from Strikeforce and a single major upset on Affliction’s January 2009 card, the last card of the promotion’s existence.

Did we miss any major upsets? Let us know and enjoy the rankings.

 

 

50 through 41

Rank	Odds	Loser Name	Odds	Winner Name	Result	Fight Date	Event Name
50	-250	Edgar Garcia	+200	DaMarques Johnson	Round 1 Submission	12/12	UFC 107
49	-255	Aaron Riley	+210	Shane Nelson	Round 1 KO/TKO	3/7	UFC 96
48	-256	Anthony Njokuani	+216	Benson Henderson	Round 2 Submission	1/25	WEC 38
47	-260	Antonio Duarte	+200	Albert Rios	Decision	1/24	Affliction 2
46	-265	Rafaello Oliveira	+231	Nik Lentz	Decision	9/19	UFC 103
45	-265	Gleison Tibau	+220	Melvin Guillard	Decision	6/20	Ultimate Fighter Finale 9
44	-271	Denis Kang	+226	Alan Belcher	Round 2 Submission	1/17	UFC 93
43	-276	Yushin Okami	+228	Chael Sonnen	Decision	10/24	UFC 104
42	-285	Jon Jones	+240	Matt Hamill	Opponent DQ’d	12/5	TUF Season 10 Finale
41	-288	Sergei Kharitonov	+225	Jeff Monson	Round 1 Submission	4/5	Dream.8

 

The full top 50 rankings:

http://www.tapology.com/2010/01/2009-top-mma-upsets-the-big-50-list/

Rashad Evans became a household name among MMA fans with his coaching role on The Ultimate Fighter Season 10, and now is consistently near the top ten fighters for drawing fan interest and buzz. His participation in the main event of UFC 108 has saved the day for a card that has had to deal with a string of high profile injuries and replacement fighters. While an intriguing night of fights has been salvaged, a low build-up of online interest surrounding the event may lead to UFC 108 performing near the bottom-end of recent history for pay per view performance. Online activity from the past few days suggests a buy rate in the neighborhood of 275,000 which, all things considered, may still be looked at as a success given the trouble this card has had.

Tapology translates the volume of online interest for the main and co-main event fighters into an absolute “buzz score” in order to model a pay per view forecast. The higher each individual fighter’s buzz score, the more people who have been searching and reading about that fighter online in the days leading up to the event.

Rashad Evans leads the group with a score of 13.0, and the co-main event participants come in admirably with 11.0 for Paul Daley and Dustin Hazelett with 8.6. Ultimately the card lacks a true buzz for any particular fight: for comparison sake, Diego Sanchez had a score of 27.3 leading into his UFC 107 bout with BJ Penn.

Fighter	Pre-Fight Buzz Score
Rashad Evans	13.0
Thiago Silva	10.8
Dustin Hazelett	8.6
Paul Daley	11.0
Total	43.4

The combined score for the four main and co-main event fighters is 43.4, just below the score seen for the UFC 102 event featuring Randy Couture and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. While that card surpassed many expectations with a reported 435,000 buys, it may still have been benefiting from the spillover wave of interest from UFC 100. Subsequently, UFC 103 and 106 had pre-fight scores near 60, and yet performed even worse than UFC 102 with 375,000 buys apiece.

As a result, when we plug a score of 43.4 into the model, we get an estimate of 275,000 pay per view buys, much lower than the 435,000 for UFC 102 despite the similar buzz score.

Event	Main & Co-Main Event Pre-Fight Buzz Score	Reported/Estimated Pay Per View Buys
UFC 100	156.9	1,600,000
UFC 101	83.1	900,000
UFC 102	46.6	435,000
UFC 103	56.2	375,000
UFC 104	81.1	500,000
UFC 106	63.9	375,000
UFC 107	67.5	620,000
UFC 108	43.4	275,000 (pre-fight forecast)

Post-event pay per view numbers are based off of the great analysis that can be found at MMAPayout.com, which in turn frequently source the reporting of the Wrestling Observer newsletter.

Tapology’s buzz rankings are a measure of fan interest and activity. Tapology uses data from Compete Inc o measure the level of internet users checking out over 800 of the biggest names in MMA. Activity is aggregated across multiple websites and represents United States fans only.

Source version:

http://www.tapology.com/2010/01/ufc-108-pay-per-view-prediction-interest-slow-to-build/

http://www.tapology.com/2009/12/wec-45-cerrone-vs-ratcliff-fan-buzz/

 

Donald “The Cowboy” Cerrone takes on WEC veteran Ed Ratcliff Saturday night from the Pearl at the Palms in Las Vegas. With just three weight classes the WEC has a limited number of high-profile title fights that it can schedule, and this card was left without one. The fan buzz surrounding the event is somewhat low for the WEC, and sensing an opportunity, competitor Strikeforce has decided to go head to head with an event of its own. While several compelling matchups will be held including the anticipated debut of IFL standout Chris Horodecki, limited fan awareness of the event and its participants will likely result in a quiet night of ratings for the WEC.

The buzz rankings take into account the level of activity for people searching and reading about each MMA fighter online. The more online buzz, the greater the ranking.

The average buzz rank for WEC 45’s main and co-main event fighters is 417, and while Donald Cerrone has individually climbed as high as 52nd earlier this year, it will be a tall task to build an entire event around “The Cowboy.” In comparison, the average buzz rank for Strikeforce’s main and co-main event fighters this weekend at the “Evolution” card is 226, nearly twice as healthy.

The obvious prediction is this will spell trouble for the ratings of the WEC card. More importantly, it represents a new Strikeforce strategy of antagonizing the much larger UFC/WEC empire by cherry-picking weak events to go head to head against. Strikeforce may end up winning the battle on Saturday, but with Zuffa’s history of aggressiveness towards other promotions, the fireworks may just be getting started.

Fighter	Latest Buzz Rank	Peak Buzz Rank	Peak Month
Donald Cerrone	360	52	Jan 2009
Chris Horodecki	381	122	Jan 2009
Anthony Njokuani	532	170	Apr 2009
Ed Ratcliff	396	344	Aug 2009
Average	417	172

Tapology’s buzz rankings are a measure of fan interest and activity. Tapology uses data from Compete Inc to measure the level of internet users checking out over 800 of the biggest names in MMA. Activity is aggregated across multiple websites and represents United States fans only.

http://www.tapology.com/2009/12/strikeforce-evolution-fan-buzz/

 

“Strikeforce: Evolution” takes place this Saturday from San Jose, California with a headline fight between former middleweight champion Cung Le and veteran Scott Smith. While serious MMA fans may question why the event won’t be headlined by its lone title fight between Josh Thomson and Gilbert Melendez, Tapology’s buzz data shows that the promotion is making the right decision.

Thomson and Melendez both compete at a high level but remain unknown to the average viewers that Strikeforce and its partner Showtime will look to bring in. Melendez and Thomson are currently ranked 254th and 529th in the buzz rankings, respectively, while headliners Cung Le and Scott Smith are faring much better at 24th and 97th. Cung Le ultimately will be the primary draw for the event, and should he emerge with an impressive victory could be poised to headline even bigger cards down the road.

The buzz rankings take into account the level of activity for people searching and reading about each MMA fighter online. The more online buzz, the greater the ranking.

Despite inactivity in MMA since March of 2008, Cung Le continues to generate significant fan interest, rarely falling out of the top 100 fighters and most recently almost cracking into the top 20 for November. This impressive standing for an inactive fighter is reason alone for Strikeforce to choose Le to headline their event.

While the card lacks the ammunition of Strikeforce’s two most recent major outings (Fedor vs Rogers, Carano vs Cyborg), the combination of casual fan interest in Le plus a wealth of high-level talent for hardcore fans should result in healthy viewership.

Fighter	Latest Buzz Rank	Peak Buzz Rank	Peak Month
Cung Le	24	24	Nov 2009
Gilbert Melendez	254	102	Apr 2009
Scott Smith	97	37	Apr 2009
Josh Thomson	529	166	Mar 2009
Average	226	82

Tapology’s buzz rankings are a measure of fan interest and activity. Tapology uses data from Compete Inc to measure the level of internet users checking out over 800 of the biggest names in MMA. Activity is aggregated across multiple websites and represents United States fans only.