Dana White Says Rumors of a UFC 162 Ticket Sales Flop are Way Off the Mark

There had been rumors this week of UFC 162: Silva vs. Weidman being a dud, at least on the ticket sales front.

UFC president Dana White on Thursday, at the UFC 162 pre-fight press conference, squashed those rumors.

The early rumor was that UFC 162, which takes place on Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, had sold only 25-percent of the available seats for the event. That would be a cataclysmic failure for a fight card that is the center of the promotion’s annual UFC Fight Week in Las Vegas with a UFC Fan Expo as lead-in.

That rumor was proven false, however, as White stated at the press conference, “12,400 tickets have sold. We have a 4.26 million dollar gate. So, there yah go.”

With two days to go until the event, those numbers already place UFC 162 as the eighth highest grossing MMA event in Nevada history in regards to ticket sales. That clearly marks UFC 162 as an emphatic success whether or not another ticket is sold.

The largest gross MMA gate in Nevada history was UFC 148: Silva vs. Sonnen, which also took place at the MGM Grand and accounted for a live gate of $6.9 million and 15,104 in attendance.

UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva puts his belt and 16-bout UFC winning streak on the line against undefeated Chris Weidman in the UFC 162 main event on Saturday.

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