Media Forbes: Khabib Nurmagomedov might be the best, but he needs Conor McGregor to be a Mega Star

[20falarVerdades]

Nurmagomedov is worthy of the accolades because he’s arguably the most dominant champion in the UFC. However, social media statistics from this past weekend suggest his popularity is noticeably lower when he’s not involved with former champion and bitter rival Conor McGregor.

..

Per stats I’ve obtained from the social media listening firm ListenFirst, almost every Nurmagomedov-associated social media tag and post saw less engagement than last year’s mega-brawl between the Dagestani great and McGregor.

In fact, social media interest around UFC 242 looked to be down when compared to other recent high-caliber UFC PPV main events.

Love or hate McGregor, the Irishman moves the needle like no other fighter before him. He is truly the Floyd Mayweather Jr. of MMA (without the undefeated record) because simply associating his name with an event or fighter leads to more interest and revenue.

If you include his 2017 boxing match with Mayweather, McGregor has headlined every one of the five highest-grossing UFC events in history. Nurmagomedov is an all-time great in the Octagon, but still a second-tier star when it comes to drawing power.

• Overall, there were 196K Tweets mentioning the hashtag #UFC242 on September 7, 2019. The top performing Tweet using the hashtag was Dana White sharing a video of Nurmagomedov jumping out of the octagon to hug him, which generated 45,582 responses. You could argue this moment was only interesting because it was directly relatable with the brawl that followed Nurmagomedov’s win over McGregor last October.
• That puts UFC 242 slightly below the level of real time social media interest around other recent hight profile UFC events. There were 255K Tweets mentioning the hashtag #UFC239 on July 6, 2019 around the Jon Jones vs. Thiago Santos main event, with the #UFC241 hashtag generated 219K Tweets on August 17, 2019 around Daniel Cormier vs. Stipe Miocic.

[...]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianm...onor-mcgregor-to-be-a-mega-star/#49e912e9102f

Do you agree with it ? I thought Khabib was starting to become a star by himself, but stats may show otherwise

 

[Substance Abuse]

Fuck Forbes. I don't need to read their supposed insight. They know Jack shit. Casuals.

Signed, Elite Suredawgger.

 

[CerebralKnievel]

People who argue here that Khabib is a mega star because, supposedly, 500 million Russians watch his fights on potatoes connected to aluminum foil antennas, are beyond delusional. He's a grinding wrestler with little personality.

 

[Death By Samson]

Popularity is something for high school girls to worry about.

 

[Grapplefest]

So you're telling me that Khabib vs Dustin Poirier on a shit card in the morning drew less eyes than the biggest ufc ppv ever? Wow, never would've thought.

 

[Dilan Cummingsworth]

Nurmagomedov is worthy of the accolades because he’s arguably the most dominant champion in the UFC. However, social media statistics from this past weekend suggest his popularity is noticeably lower when he’s not involved with former champion and bitter rival Conor McGregor.

..

Per stats I’ve obtained from the social media listening firm ListenFirst, almost every Nurmagomedov-associated social media tag and post saw less engagement than last year’s mega-brawl between the Dagestani great and McGregor.

In fact, social media interest around UFC 242 looked to be down when compared to other recent high-caliber UFC PPV main events.

Love or hate McGregor, the Irishman moves the needle like no other fighter before him. He is truly the Floyd Mayweather Jr. of MMA (without the undefeated record) because simply associating his name with an event or fighter leads to more interest and revenue.

If you include his 2017 boxing match with Mayweather, McGregor has headlined every one of the five highest-grossing UFC events in history. Nurmagomedov is an all-time great in the Octagon, but still a second-tier star when it comes to drawing power.

• Overall, there were 196K Tweets mentioning the hashtag #UFC242 on September 7, 2019. The top performing Tweet using the hashtag was Dana White sharing a video of Nurmagomedov jumping out of the octagon to hug him, which generated 45,582 responses. You could argue this moment was only interesting because it was directly relatable with the brawl that followed Nurmagomedov’s win over McGregor last October.
• That puts UFC 242 slightly below the level of real time social media interest around other recent hight profile UFC events. There were 255K Tweets mentioning the hashtag #UFC239 on July 6, 2019 around the Jon Jones vs. Thiago Santos main event, with the #UFC241 hashtag generated 219K Tweets on August 17, 2019 around Daniel Cormier vs. Stipe Miocic.

[...]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianm...onor-mcgregor-to-be-a-mega-star/#49e912e9102f

Do you agree with it ? I thought Khabib was starting to become a star by himself, but stats may show otherwise

It's true, without Conor Khabib would have never got the exposure that he did and WME would have never even thought of getting into mma by purchasing the UFC. People love to hate Conor but most of them are casuals who discovered this sport because of him in the first place

 

[executionermma]

UFC 239 had a much more stacked card name wise (Nunes-Holm, Askren-Masvidal, Rockhold-Blachowicz) and happened at US night/prime time. Stupid comparison by that random Forbes bum. Khabib is a mega star and doesn't need Conor.

 

[Bjjpitbull8]

 

[Prince Nephilim]

He will always have that finish over Conor. He needs to face a real challenger like Tony

 

[Deleted member 546119]

Irish only 6 million, Russia 150 million

 

[kibz]

Love or hate McGregor, the Irishman moves the needle like no other fighter before him. He is truly the Floyd Mayweather Jr. of MMA (without the undefeated record) because simply associating his name with an event or fighter leads to more interest and revenue.

McGregor is basically an exhibition fighter at this point.

Any celebrity would have the same effect.

e.g., Khabib vs The Rock.

Khabib or the UFC doesn't need McGregor any more than they need The Rock or Brock Lesner.....may as well push for Amanda Nunes vs Beyonce if they want numbers or make Nunes a "superstar".

...I don't think Khabib even cares about "superstardom" anyway....

 

[LockardTheGOAT]

Yeah, no shit Khabib won't draw as much interest without McGregor as he would with him. But that doesn't prove that he can't be a big star on his own. His public profile has been on a huge upswing ever since he beat Conor last year.

 

[greenhawk]

Twitter analytics is stupid. UFC242 was an absolute trash card except the main event yet broke TV ratings record in many countries inc Russia. The fact that it had even 140k tweets surprises me.

 

[HNIC215]

Who the fuck goes to Forbes to read about MMA...

 

[Drugstore Cowboy]

I would guess UFC 239 has many post-fight views/tags because of Masvidal KO. That KO went viral, probably seen by billions around the world.

 

[fractal]

As much as the MMA community may like Khabib he isn't polarizing enough to keep the attention of casuals, who drive these search results and revenue. As an MMA fan I am happy with the way Khabib is.
People might think he will get a big following in the middle east and all, but most people there don't care about fighting. It's a spectacle and only sells once every couple of years. If you had an event in UAE every month, after the first year, the attendance would fall drastically.
Take Fedor. Is he super popular in Russia? Does he get the treatment of a Klitschko (Ukranian, I know)?

 

[Poirierfan]

People who argue here that Khabib is a mega star because, supposedly, 500 million Russians watch his fights on potatoes connected to aluminum foil antennas, are beyond delusional. He's a grinding wrestler with little personality.

They have WAY MORE Muslims (1.5 billion) than there are Russians, your argument is null and void, dumb dumb. Khabib without 1 Russian fan can still have 1000 times more fans than Conor with just a fraction of the Muslims in the world.

 

[Cat Biscuits]

Popularity is something for high school girls to worry about.

Thank you. I don't give a shit about popularity as it's only going to bring more casuals and ignorant people to the sport. UFC needs to concentrate on making real champions and the UFC can get back it's golden age of dominant champions.

I get that the UFC wants more viewers so they can get more money. But we don't need this stupid social media popularity bullshit watering down the sport. Pretty soon we'll have nothing but average fighters who talk a great game, but aren't great fighters. In the end, I only want to watch great fights, because reality TV trash talking drama is literally on every channel these days.

 

[campbecc]

obviously he's not going to sell as much without Conor. staring a PPV in the middle of the day is also going to hurt, lots of people will have friends over to watch it together which is harder to do in the day. plus they aren't on normal PPV anymore and the card was weak besides the main event.

 

[cooks1]

Wow, that was a woeful article.

Sure, 'tweeting' is a useful metric for measuring interest. But an even more useful metric is the number of fucking people that actually watched the thing.

Here is a number for you: 26 million. That is the number of Russians alone that watched Khabib's last fight.

https://www.bloodyelbow.com/2019/9/...agomedov-dagestan-russia-dustin-poirier-fight

To put that in perspective, that is 5 times the entire population of Ireland. That is 25% of the number of people that watched the Superbowl. That's right, only 4 times as many people worldwide watched the Super Bowl as Russians alone watched this one Khabib fight.

On top of that, I am guessing the PPV sales will be around 1.5 million. Khabib is a bigger star than Conor. Bigger.