MMA legend Bas Rutten is a firm believer in the power of Conor McGregor’s numbers.
The former UFC heavyweight champion claimed that the featherweight champion holds all the cards in the UFC during a recent appearance on Submission Radio.
Rutten gushed about McGregor’s huge drawing power for cards such as UFC 189 and UFC 194, adding that his style for promoting fights could see him break PPV records in the future.
“We’re talking about like four, five hundred-thousand more pay-per-view buys than a normal show will have – lately then, right?”
“In the early days we had shows [which drew] 1.3, 1.6 actually, and 1.1. I think those are the records – but I think McGregor, if he fights against Rafael Dos Anjos, the way he promotes it, that could be a 1.5, 1.6, it could break the records.”
Fighters in headline bouts usually get “points” linked to the number of PPV buys bigger events get. This essentially means they get a few bucks for every PPV that is sold. However, Rutten feels that system might be altered if McGregor breaks the buy-rate record.
“And why not tell, as a fighter, say ‘okay normally you get like four bucks or three seventy-five per pay-per-view buy’ – I don’t know what the contract says – ‘but he can say okay, what about once we go past 1.2 million, everything after that I just want half’. You know?”
“And they’re going to be stupid to say no. Because if they say no, they’re going to miss out on all that money. If they say yes, it’s going to great for them and it’s going to be great for McGregor, and that will open barriers also for bigger paydays.”
It’s hard to argue against that. As we’ve seen, he’s already changed the promotion’s stance on allowing champions to compete for titles in other divisions without being forced to vacate their current belt.
