ROUNDTABLE: Was UFC 234 worth the money? (UPDATED)

By Michael Hiscoe, Managing Editor

Feb 9, 2019; Melbourne, Australia; Israel Adesanya (red gloves) gestures to Anderson Silva (blue gloves) during UFC 234 at Rod Laver Arena. Mandatory Credit: Jasmin Frank-USA TODAY Sports

With UFC 234 in the books, without the planned main event, was the show still worth the money? Should UFC had handled things differently?

Frank Hyden, Columnist – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

No, absolutely not. People paid to see a title fight and they didn’t get it. I don’t blame the UFC for Whittaker having to pull out, these things happen sometimes. I do blame them, though, for having an overall weaker card than they should have had. The UFC doesn’t have the ability to put on as many cards as they do. They’ve diluted their product and it shows in times like this. You lose one fight and you’re stuck with this happening. It was a pretty good card, but I’m sure the buyrate is going to be pretty bad. There was nothing the UFC could do in the short-term but in the long-term, there’s definitely plenty of things they can do to avoid this stuff. They won’t do it, but there’s stuff they could do, primarily having fewer events.

Christian Moore, MMATorch Contributor

No, it wasn’t worth the money at all. Sure, Silva and Adesanya were entertaining, but not worth $65. $65 is a lot of money for me to dish out, and besides the main, there was nothing. Listen, some fights were entertaining, but it’s not worth the price. When I order a show, I want to see fights that matter. Whether a title is involved or not. I want to see a true contenders fight, a dream match, a #1 contenders fight, or a Justin Gaethje fight. On the card, there was no one outside of the main event ranked in the top 10, so winning the fights meant nothing. I love a good fight, but if it doesn’t mean anything, then I’m not gonna spend $65.

Gary Meigs, MMATorch Contributor

While the Adesanya-Silva fight helped with the card it was not worth the money people paid for it. Even though it would have cost more to cancel the card you would have made up for it with a stronger card down the road.


NEXT: FIGHTS TO MAKE NEXT AFTER UFC FORTALEZA


Michael Hiscoe, MMATorch Managing Editor

Even when it had a middleweight championship main event, this was a very weak card. After those top two fights, there was very little to mention in terms of name value fighters or ranked competitors. Anyone that you could categorize as either, was on the periphery at best. The fights, for the most part, were not fantastic either. The silver lining to all of this was that the main event was a special fight and I am glad I got to see it live, but no this was not a pay-per-view worthy card.

Sean Covington, Columnist – Covington’s Corner

It wasn’t worth the money with the planned main event. Kelvin Gastelum wasn’t favored to win and was gonna get whooped. The Anderson Silva vs Israel Adesanya fight had some moments but failed to impress me as I thought it would. Adesanya ran when he got in any kind of trouble against Silva and that shows me all I needed to see with Adesanya; my suspicions of him are true.

UFC needs to load up their cards and spend far more time marketing their fighters and teaching more of them how to be marketable. The fans are here to be sold fights so sell us fighters so that we can buy the fights.

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