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BY PATRICK AUGER
AUG 16, 2019
The ordering process for Ultimate Fighting Championship pay-per-views has changed: UFC 241 is only available on ESPN+ in the U.S.
Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media.
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UFC 241 will take place on Saturday at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. Headlined by a Daniel Cormier-Stipe Miocic rematch for the Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight title, the main card also includes Nate Diaz’s return against Anthony Pettis, undefeated prospect Paulo Henrique Costa’s showdown with Yoel Romero in a bout with former interim middleweight title challenger Yoel Romero and eighth-ranked middleweight Derek Brunson’s battle with Ian Heinisch.
Featuring several excellent prelims -- Cory Sandhagen-Raphael Assuncao and Manny Bermudez-Casey Kenney, for instance -- the card will be worth watching from top to bottom, with UFC officials expecting that company’s largest gate ever for a California event.
Although the headliner alone would be enough for hardcore fans to purchase the show, the rest of the lineup is what makes UFC 241 feel like something special -- something that does not happen often for the promotion these days. Coming off a less-than-thrilling production at UFC Fight Night 156 in Uruguay and the lowest-rated UFC event on ESPN a week prior, most of the promotion’s cards over the past year or so have seemed like little more than filler. Even UFC 240 was lacking in notable names and contenders outside its main and co-main events, with only two bouts on the entire card featuring ranked fighters against each other.
Hosting 42 events this year, it comes as no surprise that the UFC cannot put on massive cards every time out, but viewership and gate numbers have been underwhelming for some of the promotion’s less-attractive shows of late. UFC on ESPN 5 in Newark, New Jersey, only managed to draw 680,000 viewers, with a total attendance of 10,427 and gate of $688,000; and UFC Fight Night 154 in Greenville, South Carolina, headlined by a Chan Sung Jung-Renato Carneiro featherweight tilt did even worse, drawing 7,682 fans for a total gate of $567,930. While the Greenville event saw the promotion enter a new regional market, UFC on ESPN 5 took place in one of the UFC’s most established cities and produced the lowest gate of any of the events hosted there to date.
Read more at https://www.sherdog.com/news/articl...ds-in-the-ESPN-Era-160181#o8t4uwgxvKqhsykY.99
