UFC On FOX 18 TV Ratings

Saturday night’s UFC On FOX 18 event drew an average of 2,685,000 viewers on the main FOX channel.

That’s the lowest average rating for the show since UFC On FOX 12: Lawler Vs Brown back in June of 2014, and comparing like for like it comes up a few hundred thousand viewers short of January 2015’s UFC On FOX 14: Gustafsson Vs Johnson which drew 3,049,000 viewers.

On the upside though, UFC On FOX 18 did slightly outperform last week’s boxing fight on the channel between Danny Garcia and Robert Guerrero which drew 2.5 million viewers.

There’s two main reasons that Saturday’s show slightly underperformed compared to other recent UFC On FOX events.

Firstly, the main event between Anthony Johnson and Ryan Bader only lasted 86 seconds which from a rating perspective isn’t the ideal scenario as the audience tends to grow the later the show runs, so a main event that runs the whole five rounds is likely to emerge with a higher overall rating.

Also, the truth is this just wasn’t the strongest card we’ve seen on FOX, with there being little hype surrounding Johnson Vs Bader, while the third fight on the main card in particular between Jimmie Rivera and Iuri Alcantara seemed an odd choice for a high profile spot on TV.

The UFC On FOX 18 prelims faired better on FOX Sports 1 earlier in the evening though, with a card fronted by Tarec Saffiedine Vs Jake Ellenberger helping it to an average of 702,000 viewers, the highest number for UFC On FOX prelims in a couple of years, though not by much.

Ross launched MMA Insight (previously FightOfTheNight.com) in 2009 as a way to channel his passion for the sport of mixed martial arts. He's since penned countless news stories and live fight reports along with dozens of feature articles as the lead writer for the site, reaching millions of fans in the process.