Refuting Initial Numbers, Bellator 120 PPV Does More Than 100,000 Buys

News broke yesterday morning that May 17’s Bellator 120 pay-per-view (PPV) event from the Landers Center in Southaven, Mississippi hadn’t performed all that well at the box office, pulling in somewhere in the neighborhood of 65,000 buys.

The stats were far from surprising, given that Bellator 120 lost its main attraction when lightweight champ Eddie Alvarez was forced out of his awaited trilogy match with Michael Chandler, who went on to suffer an upset at the hands of new interim champ Will Brooks.

In its place, the “Rampage” Jackson vs. Muhammed Lawal “grudge match” offered little more than a lackluster bout that was laughingly regarded as the “biggest rivalry in all of MMA.”

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Tito Ortiz also took out middleweight champion Alexander “Storm” Shlemenko in a fight that was labeled a freak show, using his massive size advantage to dispatch this Russian counterpart with a first round arm triangle.

So while initial reviews weren’t all that stellar, news has come today that the dismal reports may have been off base a bit. According to a report from Bellator-120-Clears-100000-PPV-Buys-68461″>Sherdog.com, a source close to the subject has verified that Bellator 120 did over 100,000 buys, quite the substantial increase over yesterday’s findings.

The source could not be verified to release the exact confidential numbers, but Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney was on hand to clarify the event’s success in a roundabout way:

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“I am never going to be in the business of confirming pay-per-view numbers but I’ll tell you this, going into the show I would have been very disappointed with anything less than 100,000 buys. Sitting here, despite losing our main event, I can say I am not disappointed at all in how the show performed.”

Apparently Rebney is happy with how things played out given the dire circumstances, which was nearly Bellator’s second attempt at a successful PPV after Bellator 106’s “Rampage” vs. Ortiz headliner fell apart.

Rebney said he never considered having Bellator 120 air on Spike TV and he also stated that the company wants to return to PPV sometime in the near future. He wants to wait until he has a card that is “stacked” like Bellator 120.

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Alvarez is due back for the last fight on his contract, which the titleholder could require to air on PPV.

The champ said he wants to unify the titles with Brooks yesterday. But will Rebney instead book the inevitable trilogy match-up with Chandler?