Is GSP/Hardy The Right Fight For UFC Primetime 2?

Kelsey Philpott from mmapayout makes the case:

This is absolutely the right move for the UFC.

There aren’t a lot of people that think Hardy brings a legitimate challenge, but his ability to trash talk and hype a fight is something the UFC can leverage to turn this fight into a must-see. Moreover, the added benefit of the Primetime segment involving Hardy is that it’s going to rapidly raise his profile in Britain to the point where he’ll likely equal or surpass a guy like Michael Bisping.

I honestly had not thought of the angle of raising Hardy's profile in Britain as that's a good point. However, when you couple the cost that goes into producing these shows(the first one was around 1.7 million), I'd have to think there are more efficient ways to spend that money. Maybe the UFC will be able to do things more efficiently cost wise in terms of traveling to the UK and Canada? UFC 111 is stacked something ridiculous and GSP has become a reliable PPV draw for the UFC, not to mention Frank Mir will be on board to help boost those numbers with his trash talk when he fights Shane Carwin. The odds of Dan Hardy ever becoming a champion are relatively small, and I think his profile could have been raised with a regular Countdown To UFC 111 segment.

The fight that I think should have gotten the UFC Primetime treatment is the re-match between Shogun Rua And Lyoto Machida. There are TONS of back-story within the first match up, not to mention both guys do their training in the same country for the most part(which would cut costs). Also, both of these guys are right on that thresh hold of becoming legitimate PPV draws(unlike Hardy). If the UFC were to feature them on UFC PrimeTime I think that would incline the casual fan to think that these are guys that they shouldbe interested in getting to know, pushing them over that thresh hold. Currently all of the champions in the UFC are solid/proven PPV draws except Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida. Silva might receive a slight boost with his destruction of the popular Forrest Griffin at UFC 101. Which would leave Machida to benefit from the exposure of the second UFC Primetime.