It appears that fans were not that interested in a Robbie Lawler vs. Rafael dos Anjos fight, or the other three main card bouts on the Winnipeg main card. According to MMA Fighting, the overnight ratings were the third-worst of any UFC on Fox event, and the worst of any of their six annual December events.
The show did 1.78 million viewers and a 0.6 rating in the all-important 18-49 demographic.
That number is expected to rise a bit, likely over the two million mark, due to the last three rounds of the main event stretching past the measured 8pm-10pm ET time period. It also doesn’t accurately measure the west coast, due to the show being live and not airing in that time period at all, so there will be adjustments. But I wouldn’t expect a major difference.
According to Dave Meltzer, this overnight number of viewers is only better than one Fox show – the last one in July, headlined by Chris Weidman vs. Kelvin Gastelum. And it’s way down from other December Fox shows so far.
The headliner saw Dos Anjos take a one-sided unanimous decision win over Lawler. The rating was likely hurt a bit by the decision to move Jose Aldo to the UFC 218 headliner, instead of taking on Ricardo Lamas on this event. Lamas ended up getting brutally knocked out by late replacement Josh Emmett in the co-main event.
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