The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Miocic-Cormier will be a summer blockbuster
Champion vs. champion bout has chance to be a big draw
Stipe Miocic and Daniel Cormier together in the octagon should be a boon for the UFC.
If UFC 226 were an upcoming super hero film, it might be compared to “Black Panther.”
The film opens in February, and is about one of Marvel’s lesser-know known characters, but one that has a cult following. It’s tracking for a big opening weekend, and could be one of the surprise hits of 2018.
The same could be said about the upcoming crossover super fight between heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic and light heavyweight champ Daniel Cormier.
Black Panther won’t ever be mistaken for Marvel’s go-to hero Spider-man, nor will Miocic or Cormier when compared to the worldwide appeal of Conor McGregor.
In UFC president Dana White’s world, McGregor means dollars and plenty of them. McGregor has delivered at the box office.
According to tapology. com, four UFC events with headline bouts including McGregor rank among the top five in all-time UFC pay-per-view buys. Each top five event had at least 1,200,000 buys, including No. 1 on the list — UFC 202 in August 2016, which had reportedly 1,600,000 buys.
The headliner was McGregor vs. Nate Diaz 2 for the lightweight title. Fox Sports named it the 2016 Fight of the Year, but there was more. The build-up to the bout was tension-filled, including a news conference the week of the fight that turned chaotic when the fighters began throwing bottles and cans at each other.
A few days later, McGregor defeated Diaz.
The McGregor machine revved up much more last summer when he and boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s crossover bout generated a reported eye-popping 4.3 million pay-perview buys.
Fans ate up the McGregor fights, but the question is will fans eat up the Miocic-Cormier matchup? Can it reach 1 million buys? The UFC has set up this bout in an interesting way. The buildup to UFC 226 will coincide with its popular Fox Sports 1 reality show “The Ultimate Fighter.”
The show’s 27th season debuts April 18 with a twist — the teams will
be coached by Miocic and Cormier. The drama of bad blood won’t be there since the fighters have become friends. Last summer, they filmed a UFC show titled “In the Clinch.”
With the unlikely knowledge they would ever fight each other one day, Cormier couldn’t help but take a liking to the heavyweight champ and Eastlake North graduate.
“Stipe’s a fantastic guy. A great champion,” said Cormier before UFC 220 in Boston. “He does a lot of things in the community that people don’t even know. It was great to learn more about Stipe, and kind of dig into his mentality. From when we were filming, to when we were driving and sometimes not on camera, I was trying to get into his mindset. What I learned is this a man that truly believes
he’s the baddest man on the planet.”
That might be true but time will tell if the baddest man on the planet and an all-time great in Cormier (20-1, including 13 heavyweight fights) can generate interest that breaks into the mainstream. The light heavyweight champs think so.
“It’s a big deal,” Cormier told TMZ Sports. “Great opportunity to fight the greatest heavyweight champion of all time and try to cement myself as one of the best fighters to ever do it.
The novelty of UFC 226 is two champions going toe to toe in a crossover bout, but don’t expect trash talk, things being thrown at news conferences or bad blood.
How that translates to pay-per-view buys will be interesting to track.
The top event for payper-view buys involving Miocic was UFC 203 at Quicken Loans Arena, where the champ knocked out Alistair Overeem in the first round. It reportedly had 475,000 buys. On the Cormier side, UFC 214 had 860,000 buys for his headline rematch vs. Jon Jones. It was the only loss of Cormier’s career.
Combining those figures would put buys well over 1,000,000, but there’s no guarantee that will happen. The good news is the UFC has two all-time great champions ready to throw down. That’s win-win all the way.
Miocic and Cormier together in the octagon should be a boon for the UFC.