The Ultimate Fighting Championship's first offering of 2009 may go off Saturday night in Ireland, but the promotional push was more palpable this week for UFC 94, the Jan. 31 card from Las Vegas headlined by a super fight between Georges St. Pierre and B.J. Penn.
The welterweight title bout was injected with intensity this week as the UFC premiered its "Primetime" series on Spike TV, which chronicles both athletes in a timely and dramatic way as they prepare for the fight. UFC President Dana White told CBSSports.com that the company spent $1.7 million producing the series, meaning it would have to generate about 60,000 pay-per-view buys to pay for itself, as calculated by MMAPayout.com. The show has already sold out the MGM Grand Arena. Two more “Primetime” episodes will air over the next two Wednesdays with several replays.
The first airing on Jan. 14 attracted 880,000 viewers, more than any of the UFC's "Countdown" hype specials has done. That number was compounded by the 614,000 eyeballs watching a replay that aired immediately afterward. The number was a huge increase for Spike TV compared to its Wednesday night ratings in recent weeks. White told CBSSports.com that the plan is to save the "Primetime" productions for three big events per year.
Footage for episode one was shot as recently as this week. The show was starkly similar in presentation to HBO's acclaimed "24/7" boxing series, which in its first season pushed the Oscar de la Hoya vs. Floyd Mayweather fight in May 2007 to the biggest pay-per-view buy rate in history (2.4 million).
Much like the HBO series, "Primetime" featured heavy doses of hip-hop music set to training footage, an emphasis on atmospheric photography in snowy Montreal and tropical Hilo, and close-up shots of the fighters answering probing questions. The episode opened with Penn, in unforgettable fashion, telling St. Pierre that he was "going to try to kill you, I'm not joking about this."
The first episode ended on a cliffhanger, with Dana White concerned that Penn was blowing off training and not answering the president’s calls. Penn trainer Rudy Valentino told InsideFighting.com that Penn took Tuesday through Saturday off to allow his body to recuperate after three straight months of intense training, and that White had never checked on a Penn training camp like that before. Valentino suggested the savvy UFC executive may have done it to create a storyline hook for the show.
“Primetime” overshadowed the go-home hype for UFC 93 on Saturday, which suffered because of a "Countdown" special not airing on Spike TV for reasons that remain unclear. The UFC posted the special to its website, and it also aired on European television and on DirecTV's pay-per-view preview channel. The program focused heavily on the Mauricio "Shogun" Rua vs. Mark Coleman rematch and did a particularly good job of re-introducing Coleman, who debuted in MMA at UFC 10, to current fans. Fortunately for the UFC, the hype wasn't needed to boost ticket sales for their first event in Dublin, as UFC 93 sold out the O2 Arena in four days at about 9,000 seats.
UFC 93 is headlined by Rich Franklin vs. Dan Henderson in a 205-pound battle. The winner will coach opposite Michael Bisping on season nine of "The Ultimate Fighter," which is set to premiere April 1 on Spike TV. Henderson and Franklin were flown to England early to begin taping the show's eliminator fights; only footage featuring the UFC 93 winner will make air, according to an interview Dana White did with ESPN The Magazine. The Henderson/Franklin vs. Bisping match is expected to take place in July. All fighters on the card made weight Friday morning.