The Ultimate Fighter seems to have settled in at what will likely be the normal level of the season as Tuesday’s show did 1.25 million viewers. It was up five percent from the prior week.
After four weeks, the show averages 1.31 million viewers in its new time slot, a number helped by the 1.51 million viewers for the season premiere. It is pretty clear cut at this point that the show on Tuesday will significantly beat the prior two Friday night seasons on FX, but also fall short of the numbers the show did during its run on Spike from 2005 to 2011.
The show did a 0.7 in the overall 18-49 demo, the same as the previous week. The only major head-to-head sports competition was college basketball on ESPN, which did 2.23 million viewers, beating TUF slightly, doing an 0.8 in the 18-49 demo.
Tuesday’s show featured Collin Hart, coached by Jon Jones, beating former Strikeforce fighter Kevin Casey, coached by Chael Sonnen, via a straight 20-18 decision. Hart managed to work from the top and score enough to win both rounds, even though Casey has a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt and has trained under Rickson Gracie.
The win was the first of the season for Team Jones.