(“Your numbers are a little weak in the swing states, Jon. We’d like you to consider wearing this American flag pin.” Pic: ESPN)

Even as MMA hardcores continue to cream their collective jeans over the unbelievable awesomeness of new light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, early estimates indicate UFC 128 didn’t quite live up to expectations in the sales department. Stalwart fight journalist (and the kind of dude who keeps track of this stuff) Dave Meltzer reports his numbers show Saturday night’s pay-per-view notching between 415,000-470,000 buys, which puts it pretty much exactly on the nose of the UFC’s “average” buy rate of 445K. What’s that mean exactly? Well, to borrow a phrase from Scott Coker, it means UFC 128 didn’t really “move the needle” with casual fans.

Naturally, some of the people who get paid to have opinions about this kind of thing (dudes like us) will see this as a failure on the part of Jones himself. After all, the UFC did everything it could to market this PPV behind the 23-year-old phenom, including both a “Countdown” special and the heretofore unseen “In the Moment” documentary on SpikeTV. To this notion, we’d like to say: Not so fast. Even as a website that’s occasionally been quasi-critical of the sport’s new Christ figure, we think it’s pretty unfair to hang this particular PPV’s disappointing showing on Jones. Don’t forget that he didn’t become a full-on breakout superstar until AFTER he crushed Mauricio “Shogun” Rua to win the strap, you guys.

(Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle.)

Affliction VP Tom Atencio is once again claiming that his organization sold more than 100,000 pay-per-views for their first event, and he doesn’t care what you heard. Atencio told MMA Weekly recently that they did “well over 100,000″ — a phrase that’s becoming all too familiar — but that he isn’t planning on proving it by releasing the official numbers. And why not?

“It’s been my experience that the UFC doesn’t release their numbers, and I try to learn from other companies with mistakes and what they’re doing right,” Atencio said.

[...]

“We did well over 100,000,” Atencio said. “At this point, we did well over, but I don’t want to give the exact numbers.”

Last week Dave Meltzer estimated the number of pay-per-views sold as being somewhere between 50-85,000, though it wasn’t exactly clear where he was getting that figure from. Now Atencio is basically asking us all to take his word for it and trust that he’s telling the truth. We’d like to, but ever since we dated that vaguely European girl in college we’ve had some real trust issues.