McGregor, Aldo make weight as UFC’s biggest week approaches climax

LAS VEGAS — Both champion Jose Aldo and interim champion Conor McGregor hit the featherweight limit of 145 on the nose Friday, paving the way for their title fight at the MGM Grand Garden Saturday in the main event of UFC 194.

Both men looked like they’d struggled to make the weight. McGregor, in particular, had sunken eyes and seemed as if it were difficult for him to cut those final few pounds.

But McGregor, who will earn a card-high $500,000 according to purse figures supplied by the Nevada Athletic Commission, has helped attract massive interest in the fight.

According to Edward Muncey, the senior vice president of digital for the UFC, Friday’s weigh-in was the most-watched online in company history.

He also said traffic on UFC.com this week was double or more than double the normal each day.

“Since Monday, we’ve been seeing double or sometimes more than double in our … traffic across live broadcast to just pure raw web traffic,” Muncey said. “It’s definitely new territory, no doubt about it.”

Though much of the interest was generated by the two title fights at the top of the card — Chris Weidman will defend his middleweight title against Luke Rockhold in the co-main — Muncey said that surprisingly, traffic was spread out.

He said that McGregor and Aldo were the top two searches on UFC.com all week, but he said other fighters who aren’t on the UFC 194 card also were the focus on intense interest. The UFC had two other cards in Las Vegas this week in addition to Saturday’s UFC 194.

More than 60 percent of the traffic on UFC.com this week came from outside the U.S., Muncey said.

“You’d think it would be all about the pay-per-view, but it’s not,” Muncey said. “Conor and Jose are doing great, of course, but you know what surprised me? Yoel Romero [a Cuban who fights Jacare Souza Saturday] was doing extremely well. Kailin Curran [who beat Emily Kagan in the first bout of Thursday’s card] showed up in our Top 10 searches. Frankie Edgar has had a lot of searches.

“Paige VanZant did really, really well, and of course, after the fight, there were a tremendous amount of searches for Rose [Namajunas, who defeated her in Thursday’s main event].”

Below are the results of the weigh-in along with payroll from figures provided by the Nevada Athletic Commission:

Jose Aldo (145), $400,000 to show plus $100,000 to win, versus Conor McGregor (145), $500,000 to show, no win bonus, for the UFC featherweight title.

Chris Weidman (185), $275,000/$275,000 versus Luke Rockhold (185), $80,000/$80,000, for the UFC middleweight title.

Jacare Souza (186), $135,000/$60,000 versus Yoel Romero (185), $125,000/$25,000

Demian Maia (170), $78,000/$78,000 versus Gunnar Nelson (170), $75,000/$75,000.

Max Holloway (146), $45,000/$45,000 verson Jeremy Stephens (145), $43,000/$43,000.