Saturday night’s UFC 158 prelims were watched by an average of 1.58 million viewers on FX according to industry figures released yesterday.
That makes it the third most watched prelim show ever on the channel, behind UFC 156 (1.9 million) and UFC 148 (1.8 million).
The buzz surrounding the main event on PPV between GSP and Nick Diaz appears to have given a boost to all the shoulder programming for the event with both the weigh-ins and post-fight show on Fuel TV posting record numbers and even the pre-fight press conference online being reported to have been the most watched since UFC 148.
The UFC will now be hoping that all this will lead to a strong buy rate for the pay-per-view with initial reports suggesting it could be pushing close to the one million mark which would exceed expectations and be a home run for all concerned.
