In 2009 UFC President Dana White said if UFC 100 broke 1,500,000 PPV buys he would jump off the 43-story Mandalay Bay. It got 1,600,000

In a rare moment, cooler heads prevailed, but not until White started actually training for the BASE jump. BASE, which stands for Buildings, Antennas, Spans (bridges) and Earth (cliffs), is insane.

Although cheeleading has a vastly larger track record of catastrophic injury with some 20,000 injuries reported every year, MMA in dangerous. Skydiving is really dangerous.

BASE jumping is catastrophically dangerous, with a 2007 study recording 14 deaths in 32,760 jumps, with a huge rate of serious injury on top of that.

If anyone is upset with White for not jumping off the Mandalay Tower, well, having some upset fans with a long memory is better than being dead with a wife and children.

During the UFC 148 conference call, White made another prediction, without the promise to tug on Superman’s cape, cave dive crocodile lairs, or shoot himself in the side of the head with a large caliber handgun.

“There’s no doubt that we expect over 1 million buys here. We expect UFC 100 numbers,” said White during a UFC 148 pre-fight media conference call.

There have been some underwhelming PPV buy rates in the last two years.The last event to break one million pay-per-view buys was 2010’s UFC 121, headlined by then heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar vs. then unbeaten Cain Velasquez.

Neither Georges St. Pierre nor Jon Jones have as yet broken one million buys on their own. The fabled UFC 100 was headlined by both Brock Lesnar and George St. Pierre defending their titles.

Can UFC 148 break 1,000,000 buys?

Anderson Silva is the best fighter in MMA, some say ever. The last time they met Chael Sonnen dominated Silva like it was his job, before succumbing to a last minute triangle choke. The pre-fight trash talk has been epic; WWE stars are probably taking notes on it in a seminar.

The stars are aligned to break 1,000,000 buys on July 7.