The TV ratings are now in for the two big MMA events of the past weekend, UFC fight Night 70: Machida Vs Romero and Bellator 139: Kongo Vs Volkov.
Let’s start with Bellator 139 which took place on Friday night on Spike TV and delivered an average audience of 764,000, peaking with 940,000 viewers during the main event which saw Cheick Kongo claim a unanimous decision victory over Alexander Volkov.
As you’d expect this event marked a significant drop from the 1.6 million viewers who tuned in to see Bellator 138: Kimbo Vs Shamrock, but in terms of non-Marquee events for the promotion, Friday’s show, which wasn’t given much pre-fight hype, performed well.
A day later it was the UFC’s turn and they pulled in an average of 909,000 viewers over on FOX Sports 1 for their main card headlined by Lyoto Machida Vs Yoel Romero.
Oddly, it was actually the main prelim card bout between Alex Oliveira and Joe Merritt that drew the highest rating of 966,000 viewers which is explained by the fact that the UFC’s coverage switched over from FOX Sports 2 at that time following a woman’s soccer game on FS1 which had been watched by over 1.3 million viewers.
That means some of those viewers must have stuck around to watch a bit of the UFC coverage, but unfortunately didn’t stick around for the rest of the card.
The UFC Fight Night 70 card had been hit hard due to travel Visa issues, so the overall rating for the main card was solid, though it did dip slightly below the 950,000 who tuned in to UFC Fight Night 68: Boetsch Vs Henderson card earlier in the month.
