Depending on his pay-per-view share, Nick Diaz can likely pay off that tax debt in the wake of UFC 158.

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President Dana White once referred to his welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre as the "King" of pay-per-view (PPV) buys.

I guess that makes Nick Diaz queen.

Or court jester, in the case of his UFC 158 loss to St. Pierre, which went down earlier this month at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada (results here). Aside from his pre-fight circus, Team Diaz has been releasing secret videos and making accusations of cover ups while demanding a main event rematch (see why here).

If he helped draw "a bit under 1.1 million PPV buys," like veteran reporter Kevin Iole suggests, he might just get one.

That number is significantly higher than Dave Meltzer's initial report, which pegged the final tally "trending" in the neighborhood of 800,000 (compared to this fight), and, enough reason to compel the powers-that-be to convince Diaz to scrap his planned retirement.

Heck, for that kind of bread, he may even overlook a failed drug test, which was originally expected to cost Diaz his job. True, he's been difficult to deal with (see why here), according to White, but those wolf tickets aren't going to sell themselves.

St. Pierre's last four headliners have sold approximately 700,000, 800,000 (x2) and 770,000 against the likes of Carlos Condit, Jake Shields, Josh Koscheck and Dan Hardy, respectively. By comparison, Anderson Silva beat the brakes off Chael Sonnen in front of 925,000 paying customers. "Rush" may be the king of PPV buys, but Nick Diaz is clearly the king of pre-fight hype.

But is he worth holding onto to help improve the bottom line?


Source: http://www.mmamania.com/2013/3/27/41538 ... s-diaz-mma