UFC and Fox officials were in celebratory mood over the success of Saturday night’s UFC on FUEL TV 8 show headlined by Wanderlei Silva’s knockout win over Brian Stann.
The fight of the year candidate – on a show featuring Silva’s, Mark Hunt‘s and Takanori Gomi‘s return to fighting in Japan after years of absence – drew 485,000 viewers live for the three-hour show. That more than doubles the previous all-time record for the station of 217,000 viewers set for UFC on FUEL TV 1, headlined by Diego Sanchez vs. Jake Ellenberger, on February 15, 2012.
Both the pre-fight show (250,000 viewers) and post-fight show (219,000) became the second and third most-watched shows in station history. Even more impressive is the post-fight show didn’t start until 1 a.m.
“F****in amazing, Fox is going crazy,” said Dana White in a text message to MMAFighting.com when the rating was released.
The actual rating for the show is not yet available, but it should hover around the 1.0 range, a figure largely thought to be impossible for a station with the profile and dial position of Fuel.
The Silva vs. Stann match was almost storybook like with the thought-to-be broken down Silva coming back from three first round knockdowns to win via spectacular second-round knockout. But, if anything, the actual quality of the last two fights probably only had minimal effect on the numbers, since people wouldn’t have known when tuning in what was going to happen. Plus, the pre-show numbers, going head-to-head with actual fights on Facebook, already indicated record levels.
The co-main event fight saw Hunt, also an underdog, giving up 14 inches in height, knockout Struve in the third round.
If anything, it shows that it’s far more about the personality profile than the UFC record when it comes to ratings. Silva came into the fight with a 3-5 UFC record, but remains one of the company’s most popular fighters stemming from his fighting style and his legend from Japan. Stann was only 6-4 in UFC competition, but also very popular. Stann is a great public speaker, which is a tremendous attribute for a main-event fighter, and both men do have good track records of providing exciting fights.