Outraged by his friends who implored him not to take his wife to UFC Rio and sell them the ticket, the fan sent a message of solidarity with his wife, who ended up getting injured and unable to go, and disgust with his friends by saying, “If she’s not going with me, nobody’s going,” and subsequently tore their tickets to shreds, despite his wife’s appeal for him to go without her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBykgYvOWRM

Anderson Silva was a boon to Rede TV! on Saturday. Photo: Gustavo Aragão.

Those who put their money on Brazilian fighters always come out on top. On Saturday night, the Rede TV! network, with its broadcast of UFC Rio, attained the largest audience in its twelve-year history, according to “Folha de São Paulo” columnist Keila Jimenez. According to the journalist, prior Ibope (Brazilian institute of public opinion and statistics) numbers for the 10pm to midnight time slot, when the UFC main card was broadcast, recorded a nine-point audience in São Paulo, taking third place for that time slot – training Globo network (20 points) and Record network (10 points). Each point in greater São Paulo is equivalent to 58 households.

At a number of moment, however, Rede TV! was in second place, with an average of around 11 points, only training behind Globo. But then Anderson Silva entered the scene. During the middleweight champion’s title defense against Yushin Okami, the network took top spot with a colossal 13 points. It is the highest Ibope mark the network has ever reached. The historic record is the equivalent of ten times Rede TV!’s average daily audience – around 1.5 points. Only during comedy show “Pânico na TV” does Rede make it to its highest rating of nine points, on Sundays.

Rizzo held the kick pads for Anderson on Copacabana Beach on Wednesday. Photo: Gustavo Aragão.

Thirteen years ago, Pedro “The Rock” Rizzo was one of the stars of the show. At the first UFC in Brazil, in 1998, the Marco Ruas student brought the crowd to its feet to match sinews with barroom brawler David “Tank” Abbott, and he came out with flying colors. Now working behind the scenes on Anderson Silva’s training team, Pedro doesn’t feel any nostalgia at all.

“It was important. We were trailblazers, but there’s no way to compare it with what the people of Rio are witnessing today, in and out of the ring. It wasn’t just a different reality, it was a different sport,” says Rizzo in analysis.

“There were different rules, different facilities, different purses… In a nutshell, it was a time when Tank Abbott was one of the stars of the UFC. These days not one Tank Abbott would make it into the UFC. The Tank Abbott of today would, perhaps, be Roy Nelson, for his physique. In other words, the Tank of today is much, much better and withstands a lot of punishment too,” he says with a grin.

Dentist and black belt Rodrigo Lima, a resident of Espirito Santos, and lawyer José Brito, from Rio, experienced opposite emotions late Friday night.

The fight to purchase one of the 16,000 UFC Rio tickets was unfolding similarly for both of them, to tell the truth. But… “I tried desperately to buy a ticket; I used two laptops at the same time but the site was terribly slow. If anyone knows someone who wants to sell theirs, help me out,” said the dentist Rodrigo via email.

Now José, a lawyer, struck gold. “I opened a ton of browser windows and started attempting to make the purchase at several prices but always came up with an error, even in putting in my CPF (equivalent to social security number). I’d already accepted defeat, until I had the surprise of seeing that Ingresso.com had charged my account for a 275-real ticket. It happened that it didn’t send out my confirmation, it only came this morning,” said the overjoyed white belt, stoked.

For UFC 129 in Toronto, newspaper and website classifieds turned out to be the best channel for picking up sold-out tickets. There, at least, a lot of the tickets were sold without major hikes to the cost – they were fans who decided not to or wouldn’t be able to go, not looking to profit from it. Here, unfortunately, it will be hard to get around resorting to scalpers, for anyone dreaming of watching UFC 134 live.

Dana no Copa. Foto: Wander Roberto/UFC.

O Ultimate Fighting Championship e a Ingresso.com informaram que todos os ingressos postos à venda para o público em geral se esgotaram em apenas 1h14min. A venda foi iniciada às 23h30 dessa sexta-feira, dia 17, exclusivamente pelo site www.ingresso.com. Na noite anterior, os ingressos disponibilizados para pré-venda limitada e restrita aos clientes HSBC (menos de 5%, segundo dados oficiais) se esgotaram em menos de 40 minutos.

A velocidade das vendas comprova a decisão acertada em realizar no Rio o maior evento de artes marciais mistas do mundo. O UFC Rio acontecerá no dia 27 de agosto, na HSBC Arena, na Barra da Tijuca, e terá como luta principal da noite o confronto entre o campeão dos médios Anderson Silva contra o desafiante Yushin Okami.

São esperados 14 mil fãs que viverão uma noite histórica, como se estivessem em Las Vegas. Seis telões de alta qualidade serão instalados ao redor da arena no setor das arquibancadas – 2.629 lugares foram bloqueados e retirados da venda para instalação dos equipamentos, reproduzindo para o torcedor a experiência vivenciada nos eventos realizados no exterior. Cada edição do UFC é acompanhada pela televisão em 354 milhões de lares em 145 países e territórios em 19 diferentes línguas.

UFC Rio/134
August 27, 2011
HSBC Arena, Barra da Tijuca, Brazil

Anderson Silva vs. Yushin Okami
Forrest Griffin vs. Mauricio “Shogun” Rua
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs. Brendan Schaub
Edson Barboza vs. Ross Pearson
Erick Silva vs. Mike Swick
Luiz Cane vs. Stanislav Nedkov
Spencer Fisher vs. Thiago Tavares
David Mitchell vs. Paulo Thiago
Alexandre “Cacareco” Ferreira vs. Rousimar Palhares
Yuri Alcântara vs. Antonio Carvalho
Yves Jabouin vs. Ian Loveland

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