Matt Roberts
While the UFC's final FOX show of 2012 had a strong finish to the year, their last FX card predictably performed below-par in the ratings.
The ratings are in for the UFC's final FX show of 2012, and in an absolute stunner, Colin Fletcher vs. Norman Parke was not enough to persuade the masses to watch the Brisbane, Australia event. Via MMA Junkie:
The main card averaged 972,000 viewers, while prelims on FUEL TV averaged 96,000, MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) on Tuesday confirmed with industry sources
Believe it or not the FUEL TV ratings more than doubled the 44,000 viewers for the FX 5 prelims, but FX 5 lost trillions of viewers when Yves Edwards vs. Jeremy Stephens was pulled from the card. As for the main card, 972,000 is a decrease from their 1.1 million viewers from the October event.
Ratings like this are to be expected. This was a weak card on paper (unless you were heavily invested in TUF: The Smashes) and the main event of George Sotiropoulos vs. Ross Pearson, while used as a headliner for the Australian crowd and the show, is basically ratings suicide in the US. The only other non-TUFers fight was Hector Lombard's first round KO of Rousimar Palhares. For as long as the UFC fills future main cards with 2 international TUF finales, they'll probably continue to see numbers like these.
On the plus side, it looks like the UFC is seemingly moving off of Friday content on FX, whether it'd be TUF or a live show. The next card is Saturday January 20th, headlined by Michael Bisping and Vitor Belfort, and also features future hall-of-famer C.B. Dollaway against Daniel Sarafian.
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