Win or lose, the YouTube hero that is Kimbo Slice is always a ratings draw:
via MMA Weekly:
Episode three of The Ultimate Fighter: The Heavyweights – featuring Kimbo’s first fight under the UFC banner – produced the highest numbers in Spike TV history in many key categories and vaulted into the Top 5 of the most-watched bouts in the history of televised mixed martial arts in the United States.
Despite Kimbo showing little progress in his MMA skills and Nelson providing little excitement in the victory, the initial broadcast of the episode pulled in an average of 5.3 million viewers for the entire 60-minute broadcast, according to Spike TV vice president Brian Diamond. For the fight itself, the final 15 minutes of the show, the average rose dramatically to 6.1 million viewers for that time period. That means that the number of viewers tuning in for the actual fight increased substantially in order to raise the episode average to 5.3 million viewers.
[...]
The previous record for most average viewers during an episode of The Ultimate Fighter or any other original series on Spike TV was this season’s premier, which boasted an average of 4.1 million viewers. Episode three drawing an average of 5.3 million puts the show in uncharted territory for the network.
I love MMA. If anything, its too real. I can’t wait until a quality mma product (UFC) is on a network regularly.
It is. Spike shows Fight Night, which I believe is original programming at times?
He’s a little more than just a “yottube hero”. He was featured in two CBS network specials in actual MMA fights for Elite XC, which drew higher ratings than any UFC show.
And CBS is bringing another CBS show in November, this time featuring Fedor Emelianenko, who is probably the greatest fighter ever, but doesn’t fight for UFC.
Actually the highest rated show for Spike TV is a episode of WWE RAW in June 2005, before RAW was moved to the USA Network. That episode of RAW drew Over 5.9 million viewers. This record is a new record for the UFC on Spike, please clarify this to your readers.
Juan M.
Open your eyes, it says at the last 15minutes it drew in 6.1 Million viewers which tops out 5.9 million views of RAW.
Sorry, but next time read a little more thoroughly.
Fail.
Juan M.
Open your eyes, it says at the last 15minutes it drew in 6.1 Million viewers which tops out 5.9 million views of RAW.
Sorry, but next time read a little more thoroughly.
Fail.
————————-
The entire episode of Raw averaged 5.9 million viewers, so it is likely that a segment or two got more than 6.1 million viewers
Spike is announcing this as the highest rated episode of an original spike program. Evidently they don’t consider WWF Raw as such. I do know that Spike has more of a stake in the Ultimate Fighter, and has a lot of say in the program, so it might be co-produced by Spike which is why they consider it an “original Spike production”.
Billy, The show had at one point 6.1 million viewers, that was not the enitre average for the entire show, the average was 5.3 million, the average for WWE RAW in June of 2005 was 5.9 million viewers thats 600,000 more viewers the UFC’s average, the average is different from the amount of viewers watching a small portion of the show. Understand that and don’t question anything you don’t know what you are talking about. Spike TV loved having WWE Raw on their network as they had the #1 spot of the weekly cable ranking a lot of times of the year, for cable tv WWE=Ratings, every Cable network executive knows that to be a fact. If Spike had the opportunity to drop UFC for WWE they would in a heart beat.
Juan M, you are an idiot. First of all UFC just beat Raw last week, and becuase WWE attracts such a low grade audience like yourself, that’s why it’s so tough to sell advertising, and you can divide WWE ratings in half to what they can actually sell for TV. UFC like other non-embarrassing sports charge primo dollar for their advertising, where WWE gets endorsement deals with Super Soaker.