Now that the event itself is over we know the answer to most of the questions that have hung in the air since it was announced that the UFC and Fox had gone in to business together. Things, to me at least, looked pretty much the same except for where Fox Sports predictably shoehorned itself in. We got lots of highly cliched video introductions that were painful for the likes of you and I to sit through but probably necessary on some level to introduce the sport to those who have never been exposed. There was the Fox Sports music and Curt Menefee and a very gratuitous use of Brock Lesnar who has still not learned how to pronounce the word “Velasquez.” Things were a wee bit more polished and corporate but overall we loyal fans who watch every show felt, more or less, right at home.
The point of contention for most has been Fox demanding that the co-main event between Ben Henderson and Clay Guida be kept off the broadcast all together. I found it rather annoying too, and I had little use for the first half hour of the Fox broadcast, but we were able to at least see that fight and selling the fight to new fans on this platform is something that had to happen. Of course poor Henderson and Guida put on a five star show that wasn’t able to be used to sell the sport but sometimes that is just the way things go.
However, as we close out this weekend and head into the next few days ahead of us our attention will turn to the ratings that this show brought in. In a stroke of bad luck though the high water mark they have to compare themselves to is the Kimbo Slice/James Thompson cauliflower ear carnival sideshow which brought in 4.85 million viewers. I don’t see anyway they best that number and naysayers will be quick to doubt the deal when the numbers come do in. I don’t think 3 million viewers is out of the question but anything above that might be optimistic.
The show was quality stuff, better than a lot of their recent PPV offerings (134 and 135 I’m looking right at you), even though the card itself was on the softer side. Of course all that was actually being sold was Velasquez/dos Santos and even more than that the UFC brand in general. And the only thing that was going to determine the ratings were the strength of those name, that brand and the promotional job Fox did. That terrible ad of dos Santos working the bag aside I feel as though they did a quality job of getting the word out and making people aware. Just how aware won’t be known until Monday but it will certainly be the biggest story of the week easily eclipsing the lead up to the already forgotten UFC 139.
