UFC 235 was the biggest event of 2019 to this point and the results showed why.

There were many spectacular performances from top to bottom as we kicked things off with a fun back and forth strawweight battle between Hannah Cifers and Poliana Viana before getting devastating knockouts via Macy Chiasson and Edmen Shahbazyan. Those were just the early prelims though!

The action continued onto ESPN for the televised prelims where Diego Sanchez would get his first win via finish in 11 years. That was followed by solid performances from Cody Stamann and Zabit Magomedsharipov with an insane Johnny Walker flying knee knockout mixed in.

Kicking off the main card were some high caliber bantamweights as former champion Cody Garbrandt threw down with Pedro Munhoz. Weili Zhang would leap up the rankings with her biggest career win over Tecia Torres before Ben Askren was welcomed to the UFC, and the welterweight title changed hands.

Oh yeah, and Jon Jones kept on doing his thing in the evening’s main event.

Historically, stacked cards haven’t proven to be the big draws when it comes to pay-per-view numbers. As long as the headliner is strong, then the buyrates should be good. In this case, we had both of those things.

Wrestling Observer News is reporting that the early UFC 235 pay-per-view estimates are ranging from 520,000 to 650,000 buys.

Regardless of whatever the final number is, it will end up being the fifth biggest UFC event since 2017 behind UFC 229’s 2.4 million, UFC 217’s 875,000, UFC 214’s 860,000, and UFC 232’s 700,000.

Both UFC 214 and UFC 232 were headlined by Jones when he took on Daniel Cormier and Alexander Gustafsson in their respective rematches. Therefore Jones now holds three of the five spots in those top sellers since 2017.

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 3/7/2019