UFC 129: Largest gate, sports or entertainment, ever held in Canada?

This was not just a sports event in town, but the biggest thing in sports in Canada with the exception of the Stanley Cup. On the Canadian sports channels it was portrayed as the equivalent of a boxing match in the heyday of a Ray Leonard or a Mike Tyson, with St. Pierre as every bit as big of a star. The Globe and Mail, the country’s national newspaper, called the show the biggest sporting event of 2011 in Toronto, Canada’s biggest city. UFC in Canada is a major sport, not the niche sport it is in the U.S.

It was the largest gate for any event, sports or entertainment, ever held in the city of Toronto. It may have been the largest for any event ever in Canada, although that is not certain because no gates were reported for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

The sellout crowd of 55,724 fans at the Rogers Centre in Toronto would be more than double the previous North American MMA record, of 23,152 set on 12/11 at the Bell Centre in Montreal for the Georges St. Pierre vs. Josh Koscheck fight. St. Pierre has the three largest crowds in North American MMA history, as UFC 83 drew 21,390 headlined by St. Pierre vs. Matt Serra.(UFC 97 with Chuck Liddell vs. Shogun Rua was announced as 21,451 but scalpers bought thousands of tickets they were unable to resell).

While a number of Pride and K-1 events at the Tokyo Dome announced crowds of more than 55,000, those figures are largely exaggerated. Because of the stage set up at those shows, the most they could have put in the building was 53,000, a number that several sellout shows did. No. 1 on the all-time list is the estimated 71,000 on August 28, 2002, outdoors at Tokyo National Stadium for the show headlined by Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Mirko Cro Cop.

The final gate announced of $12,075,000 U.S. blows away the previous MMA world record of $7,400,000 set on the August 28, 2002, Tokyo National Stadium show. It more than doubled the North American record set for UFC 100 on July 11, 2009 (Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir) of $5,441,290, which includes local closed-circuit numbers.

No pro wrestling gate has ever come close, with the record being $7,211,673 for WrestleMania 25 in Houston.

There have been a number of boxing gates bigger, but the circumstances are different. Giant gates in Las Vegas (and Lesnar vs. Mir would be similar in this sense) and Atlantic City are largely tickets purchased by casinos rather than fans. The all-time boxing record was the May 5, 2007, Oscar de la Hoya vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr . fight which drew $18,419,200 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

UFC 129 would trail only one event, the June 8, 2002, heavyweight boxing title match with Lennox Lewis vs. Mike Tyson, which did $17.2 million, as the largest combat sports gate in a non-casino city, and that gets an asterisk because there were casino purchases from Mississippi that led to that gate.

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