Twitter Mailbag: What should a pay-per-view cost, and what's Michael Bisping trying to pull?

In this week’s Twitter Mailbag, are we about to see the greatest heavyweight in MMA history get stomped on a Bellator pay-per-view? And is that pay-per-view overpriced? And speaking of pay-per-views, is the UFC middleweight champ for real with these ultimatums aimed at the best welterweight ever?

All that and more in this TMB. To ask a question for next week, tweet to @BenFowlkesMMA.

Bellator’s in a tricky situation here. If you lower the price of the pay-per-view too much, you’re telling people that you think this is literally worth less than a comparable UFC event. But if you price it at normal pay-per-view levels you risk losing the portion of the audience that’s right on the fence about whether or not to buy.

Think of it this way: If you usually order UFC events with four friends to defray the cost, and if you want to watch this Bellator event but two of your friends don’t care enough to pitch in for it, that might be all the push you need to skip it.

On the other hand, a $30 pay-per-view feels a little like a $12 bottle of wine. The price tells you it’s not the highest quality, but it’s still expensive enough to make you consider cheaper options that achieve the same result. What I’m saying is, if you think you’ve got a card worthy of pay-per-view, you might as well charge us what an MMA pay-per-view costs. One way or another, we’ll let you know if we think you were right.

At the risk of answering the first part of this question with utter nonsense, Fedor Emelianenko is still the greatest heavyweight of all time, but he is not still the greatest heavyweight of all time. Allow me to explain.

Emelianenko earned the title of greatest heavyweight in MMA back during his PRIDE days. He has since fallen off in a major, predictable way, but no clear successor has emerged to become the new greatest heavyweight of all time. Cain Velasquez couldn’t stay healthy and/or at sea level. Fabricio Werdum couldn’t stay conscious. Stipe Miocic has a decent shot at it, and if he can defend the UFC strap a few more times he’ll make history, but the jury’s still out on him. That only leaves Fedor.

As for how sad it will be if Matt Mitrione steamrolls him, I’m going to say somehow not nearly as sad as watching Emelianenko get gifted a decision win over Fabio Maldonado in Russia.