UFC star Conor McGregor was back in the viral news last week after the total chaos that took place at a Bellator event in Dublin, Ireland. McGregor was in attendance to support his longtime friend and teammate Charlie Ward, but his friendly support turned into an altercation with referee Marc Goddard and slapping a commission official in the face by the time it was all over.
Bellator 187’s main event actually featured a fight between fast rising A.J. McKee and Brian Moore but with the way the ratings numbers look, the viewers certainly didn’t tune in to watch their fight.
To no one surprise, McGregor’s wild night in the cage gave Bellator MMA a nice ratings boost. The whole show averaged 621,000 viewers, and it was McGregor’s first quarter segment that peaked at over one million viewers. In fact, most of those viewers had already tuned out by the time McKee and Moore were fighting.
These numbers further solidify McGregor’s star power, as he just became Bellator MMA’s top in-cage draw.
You mix that coupled with his record-breaking MayMay pay-per-view for boxing and his #1 and #2 records for the top two UFC PPV’s of all-time, and that’s why Conor can run around and slap fools whenever he feels like it.
So while it was some good ratings news for Bellator, it was definitely some bad press for McGregor.
