Ronda-Rousey-mean-mugUFC President Dana White recently stated in an interview that UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey is the biggest star the UFC has ever had and that she already has “Rock Star” status. However, that statement will certainly be put to the test on Saturday as Rousey headlines UFC 170 against a relatively unknown fighter (Sara McMann) and a less than stellar under card.

The UFC 170 card took a major hit last week when former UFC light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans had to withdraw from his co-main event slot against Daniel Cormier with a knee injury. Now, Cormier will face UFC newcomer Patrick Cummins who only have four MMA fights in his career.

Rousey has been featured in two UFC fights to date, one main event and one co-main event. However, both fights were heavily promoted and featured some can’t miss influences that may have skewed her PPV drawing power somewhat.

Her first UFC fight had a ton of hype simply because it was the very first female MMA fight in the UFC period. Also, she was taking on a fighter in Liz Carmouche who was openly gay which brought another interesting promotional angle that the UFC used to market the UFC 157 fight. That card also featured fighters with name value like Urijah Faber, Dan Henderson, and Lyoto Machida while taking place during Superbowl weekend.

Rousey’s second fight featured a rematch with her arch nemesis Miesha Tate while being the co-main event of one of the biggest rematches in UFC history between Anderson Silva and Chris Weidman at UFC 168. That card was going to do ridiculous PPV numbers simply because of the main event.

The UFC 157 card did roughly 450,000 PPV buys with Rousey in the main event. The UFC 168 card did just over one million PPV buys with Rousey in the co-main event.

Rousey will be carrying the load largely by herself at UFC 170 on Saturday night. Her opponent Sara McMann has one UFC fight which was almost a year ago, and that fight didn’t even appear on the UFC 159 PPV main card. McMann isn’t the most vocal fighter an largely dislikes doing interviews, so the UFC tried to build this fight around both of these fighters being Olympians. There are no other fighters on the card with huge name value. Daniel Cormier is on the card, but he’s still relatively new to casual fans and he’s fighting someone that hardcore fans don’t even connect with in Patrick Cummins. There is a welterweight bout between Rory MacDonald and Demian Maia, but neither bring much to the table when talking PPV buyrates.

Rousey has signed on to do a couple more movies in the future, so it’s clear that she can reach platforms that other fighters simply can’t at this point. She’s brash and not afraid to speak her mind which certainly helps her ‘heel’ status with fans. They certainly will tune in to see her win or lose at this point.

The only question is how many will pay $50-$60 to solely see Ronda Rousey fight someone they know nothing about? If Rousey can do north of 400,000 PPV buys with this card, she’ll definitely cement herself as arguably the largest PPV draw in the UFC.

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