Author: Dave Meltzer

Chael Sonnen’s name had been linked with Wanderlei Silva for months prior to the announcement they would coach against each other on Ultimate Fighter Brazil, and eventually fight each other.

Once the season started, the talk about the volatility and even violence on the set escalated. It peaked with the much-talked-about brawl that airs on the episode this coming weekend on Globo in Brazil and on UFC Fight Pass, the company’s on-line subscription channel, in the rest of the world. In the United States, the show is scheduled to air on Sunday at 12 p.m. ET/9 p.m. PT.

These days, the season and the brawl are in Sonnen’s rear-view mirror. Today, he’s got two main concerns. The fight, which at this point is scheduled for July 5 in Las Vegas, and getting through a training camp where he will more than likely be randomly drug tested, and where, for the first time in years, he’ll be fighting without testosterone replacement therapy.

Right now, the lack of TRT hasn’t proven to be a major hurdle, but Sonnen isn’t sure how it will all turn out.

“I’ve had a pretty good amount of success so far,” he’s said about his early training for the Silva fight. “But I’ve got to reserve the right to change this answer next week if we talk again.”

Sonnen said he had been using testosterone cypionate, which lasts longer in the body than some other forms of testosterone. He said the effects aren’t completely out of his system yet.

“I’m still having a little bit of residue and left over, and I’m still feeling really good, but there is a difference,” he said. “I’m trying a different regiment with doctors on how to fix it. I’m a bit of a test tube dummy for myself, but so far I’ve been pretty encouraged by how I’m feeling.”

His system has also been messed with as far as training and peaking for the fight itself.

At first, he was under the impression the fight would take place at UFC 173, on May 24 in Las Vegas, but the final episode of the show airs in Brazil on May 25, the next day.

“Globo didn’t like that idea, even if it’s only by a day, they wanted to complete airings of the show before the fight,” Sonnen said. “So we went to the next week, and we went from a co-main event on May 24 to a main event on May 31. Then he (Silva) didn’t agree to that, so I don’t know what’s happening. I’ve heard from everyone, but him, that it’s happening on July 5.

The difference in the changes of dates and the position on the card is significant. In the main event position, it would be a five-round fight. If it happens on July 5, with Chris Weidman’s middleweight title defense against Lyoto Machida as the main event, it reverts to a three-round fight. The change of date also changes the training schedule and intensity.

Sonnen set up time for a full camp to peak on May 31, and had temporarily moved from his home in West Linn, Ore., to Southern California, rented a place for a few months and brought in a training partner from Brazil to begin intense training. Then, the day after he arrived and the camp was supposed to get into high-gear, the date was moved back by six weeks.

“It doesn’t play on my mind,” he said. “I have coach Clayton (Clayton Hines, who has worked with Sonnen for years running his training sessions) and Mark Munoz, they have to figure those things out. I show up for practice every day. But you’re right, the intensity changes. Some days I don’t work as hard as other days, for that very reason, peaking as you put it. It was a little bit tough.

“I checked in on a Monday, and Tuesday we got the announcement the fight was moved back a month-and-a-half. We’re still in camp with Munoz. I’m not working quite as hard right now as I planned to.”

While the confrontations on the show will help build up the fight, Sonnen felt things were tense from the first day on the set, and got worse, leading to the explosion that airs this weekend. The fight was broken up quickly by the fighters on both teams. But before they were pulled apart, Sonnen had taken several sucker punches to the back of the head by a third person, Andre Dida, an assistant coach on Silva’s team, which left him bruised up and with a small cut.

While Sonnen wasn’t happy with how things went down with Silva, the third party punches from Dida he felt were far more out of line.

“It ended up being a two-on-one, and in that aspect, that was the most unfortunate part,” Sonnen said. “The whole thing is regrettable. It never should have happened. That’s one of the deals with reality TV. If you have a bad moment, you’re caught. Everyone may have a bad moment. They go in their car, you yell, turn on the radio in you car and yell. In reality TV, if you have a bad moment, you’re busted.

“And then what happened was the other knucklehead jumped in, that was a crime,” he said.
That’s what it was. That was straight up illegal.”

He said the incident, which wasn’t the first or the last between the two on the show, started when the two were waiting for weigh-ins. Silva was constantly challenging Sonnen to fight, as well as demanding that he apologize for what he had said in the past. He said Silva spit at him first. Silva took a swing and Sonnen ducked and took him down and was throwing punches when the other fighters swarmed in.

“He’s very difficult,” said Sonnen. “I can tell you, working alongside him on The Ultimate Fighter was really the most I ever go to know him, and it was tough on a day-to-day basis. It was really tough. He really followed a gang mentality. The more people on his side, the tougher he got.”

Sonnen said he tried to explain to Silva that this was a show for Brazil, and that he, as the foreigner, was expecting to be viewed by the Brazilian audience, which hit 12 million viewers in the early episodes of the season, as the bad guy. He’d even make comments to his team that they were the “bad guys,” almost like it was the name of their team.

“I had to explain to him, `I’m the bad guy, you’re supposed to be the good guy,'” he said. “But when you attempt to jump me, that’s going to turn the people against you and for me, and I don’t want to be the good guy. I had to drop the fourth curtain and explain this to him, and it didn’t register.”

Problems started early, almost from the minute he walked through the door into the gym.

“They kept us apart in the back,” he said. “We never saw each other. We were at different hotels, the whole bit. He’s in the actual gym. I’m in the actual gym. I walk through the doors and I walk right up to him. He puts his hand out, he says to me, `You have no problem with Brazil, you just have a problem with me, let’s have a good show,’ that type of deal. That kind of set the tone. I was thinking, `Well, good, that’s what we’re here for.’ It wasn’t two hours later, he was cursing, he quit the show, he shoved me, pretty much right off the bat.”

Sonnen said he never bought the part where Silva walked out.

“He quit and the Brazil thing on the show was fake,” he said. “It couldn’t have been more fake. He said, `I’m gonna quit if you don’t apologize,’ never once thinking, if I didn’t apologize, he would have painted himself into a corner where he had to quit, which, of course, you can’t do.”

With a few years of perspective, Brock Lesnar’s four-year odyssey in the UFC ultimately can be looked at as a series of “What ifs?”

What if Brock Lesnar was actually physically 100 percent during his UFC run, since he was already weakened for some time by the beginnings of the diverticulitis that nearly ended his life in late 2009?

What if Brock Lesnar had come into MMA right out of college, instead of taking years of physical pounding as a pro wrestler and wasn’t 30 years old and nearly eight years removed from wrestling when he started out?

What if Brock Lesnar had a few years fighting on smaller shows and developing a well rounded skill set before being put in high-profile UFC fights against some of the best fighters in the world?

We’ll never know the answers. But in hindsight, the Lesnar era, from 2008 to 2011, was a high point of UFC’s pay-per-view popularity. The man who captured the UFC heavyweight title from Randy Couture in his fourth pro fight was the key reason why.

It’s probably no coincidence that UFC is now featuring Lesnar heavily on Fight Pass this week, given that in the line of work that first made Lesnar a celebrity, pro wrestling, he has one of the highest-profile matches of his career on Sunday at WrestleMania XXX at the Mercedes Benz Superdome. A crowd of about 70,000 fans is expected to see him face the iconic pro wrestling figure, The Undertaker, in a match that dates back to a confrontation at UFC 121 in Anaheim, Calif.

The idea at the time was that Lesnar would retain his title against Cain Velasquez, leave the cage, exchange words with the pro wrestler after the match, and they would face at WrestleMania. Of course, the idea Lesnar, Undertaker and Vince McMahon had at the time was WrestleMania three years ago. But the UFC wouldn’t allow Lesnar to do the match while still under contract.

The Lesnar feature, includes interviews with three key wrestling and entertainment figures, wrestlers-turned movie actors Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Steve Austin, along with former head of talent relations and lead announcer during Lesnar’s first run, Jim Ross. All three double as UFC fans, and have been cage side for Lesnar’s fights, as well as other UFC events. Austin has been described by those in the UFC as being the celebrity who has the most innate knowledge of their product. Ross was heavily involved in signing Lesnar to pro wrestling out of college.

“We (he and WWE scout Gerald Brisco) saw him in the NCAA tournament his junior year, and we really liked what we saw,” said Ross in his interview..

Lesnar’s college wrestling coach at the University of Minnesota, J Robinson, happened to be Brisco’s roommate in the 60s when both wrestled at Oklahoma State. The company made a deal with Robinson not to make an offer to Lesnar until after his senior year. Lesnar was aware of MMA, and in fact, nearly took a fight a few years earlier during a summer vacation in college until talked out of it by Robinson. But in those days, the money wasn’t there.

“He was a freak of nature, 6-foot-3, about 280 pounds, he looked awesome” said Ross. “He looked like our kind of guy. If UFC was as vibrant in 2000 as they are in 2014, Lesnar probably would have had a tough decision to make. I don’t know what he would have done. I would have hated to recruit against Dana, but I would have. He was my guy.”

Lesnar was not a pro wrestling fan, nor had he played football since high school. But coming out of college, his athletic ability was such that he had an NFL offer, as well as interest from three different wrestling companies, including one in Japan. Ross offered him $250,000 per year, guaranteed for four years, an unprecedented amount for someone who was neither a celebrity nor had any experience at all in being an entertainer.

After learning his craft in developmental, within only a few months of his television debut, he defeated The Rock to become, at the time, the youngest champion in company history. That first contract was quickly torn up and he had signed a new seven-year deal with a $1 million downside, and expected to earn considerably more.

In short order, people were talking of Lesnar as having the chance to be the best 300-pounder pro wrestling had ever seen.

“I thought he had the ability for WWE to become the best that we ever had,” said Ross.

But he hated the travel, and quit WWE in early 2004. He then tried out for the Minnesota Vikings, where he was a late cut. His next few years were spent with legal fights with WWE, Japanese pro wrestling, one match with K-1, and in 2008, signed with UFC.

“To give Brock Lesnar a shot (in UFC) with one win under his belt was risky,” said Johnson, who was at one point scheduled to do a pro wrestling match with Lesnar at this year’s WrestleMania.

Even though he lost his first fight to Frank Mir, his debut was a huge box office success. But he proved he was a real force seconds into his second UFC fight, with Heath Herring.

“He retired Heath Herring,” said Johnson. “I remember he hit him so hard he fell backwards, and then did a backwards roll.”

“He demolished Heath Herring,” said Austin. “I don’t think Heath Herring has been hit so hard in his life.”

Lesnar won the UFC title in his next fight over Randy Couture, but his toughest fight was still to come, with diverticulitis.

“It damn near killed him,” said Ross, who years ago had the same affliction in 2005. “Those who haven’t had it can’t understand how serious this was. I thought no way he could come back. The fact he did come back was a miracle.”

The Lesnar who came back was never quite the same. He eventually lost his title to Cain Velasquez, a far more advanced all-around fighter. Lesnar had a second bout with diverticulitis, and tried to come back. After being battered with shots to his weakened body, he fell victim to Alistair Overeem and then retired at the end of 2011.

Is Lesnar a UFC Hall of Famer? He was a champion and made two successful defenses. But of all the modern champions, he had the least developed skill set, relying almost exclusively on athletic gifts, power, freakish speed for his size, and wrestling. He was the biggest drawing card the company ever had, and almost surely brought more new fans to UFC than any fighter in the organization’s history.

Nobody would confuse him with an all-time great. He starred late. He rose quickly. He got sick and his career went down almost as fast as it rose. And when he’s talked about, the words in most conversations looking back will start include, “What if?”

On a rare weekend without a UFC live event, The World Series of Fighting and Bellator both had good news from a ratings standpoint.

WSOF 9 on Saturday night, featuring Rousimar Palhares‘ 69 second submission win over Steve Carl to capture the company’s welterweight title, pulled 242,000 viewers on NBC Sports Network. It was the second best showing the company has done, trailing only an Aug. 10 show, with Tyrone Spong vs. Angel deAnda, that did 264,000 viewers. The average for the nine shows is 201,000 viewers.

NBC Sports averaged 238,000 viewers in prime time the prior week. Prime time numbers for the past week are not yet available. The WSOF numbers would have beaten every show on the station the previous week with the exception of National Hockey League and Premier League soccer coverage.

Bellator also had good news the night before. Its show, headlined by Alexander Shlemenko’s submission win over Brennan Ward to retain the middleweight title, did 711,000 viewers that night. That was the second-best number of the season, trailing only the 880,000 viewers for the season opener with Quinton “Rampage” Jackson vs. Christian M’Pumbu. Including people who later viewed the event through Monday on DVRs, the show did 800,000 viewers, and the main event peaked with 1,030,000 viewers.

The same night number was up 40 percent from the Friday night all-time record low on Spike of 507,000 on March 21, for the Emanuel Newton’s light heavyweight title win over Attila Vegh. The five episode season average for same night viewing is 688,000, up slightly from the 666,000 average for the Friday night shows in the fall and winter season.

The Ultimate Fighter Nations episode on Fox Sports 1 on March 26 did 267,000 viewers.

The NCAA Division I wrestling championships the prior week had more widespread television coverage than any such tournament in the past. Every session aired on either ESPN or ESPN U.

The finals on March 22 did 630,000 viewers, a 27 percent drop from last year. That was understandable since last year’s finals featured the Kyle Dake vs. David Taylor final at 165 pounds, considered one of the biggest championship finals of all-time. This year’s finals had no matches of anywhere near the same magnitude.

The semifinals the night before, with a lot of split-screen coverage of two matches on two mats going on at the same time, did 504,000 viewers. The number was almost identical with the Bellator show taking place at the same time.

Both sessions did well below ESPN’s average in prime time for the week of 897,000 viewers.

The tournament was more of a boost to ESPN U. On that station, the battles for third place at 11 a.m. on March 22 did 163,000 viewers. Even with a Saturday morning time slot, it was the second most watched show on the station during the week, and highest live sports event. Early round matches that aired on Thursday, March 20, in prime time, did 137,000 viewers, the fifth highest on the station for the week.

In six years of fighting in he U.S., Cris “Cyborg” Justino had never been in serious trouble in any kind of fight. But Friday night, that changed when she lost a Muay Thai fight to Jordina Baars. But should a loss in a completely different sport change the dynamics of a potential MMA showdown with Ronda Rousey?

After watching Cris ‘Cyborg’ Justino dominate every fight since she burst onto the U.S. scene nearly six years ago, it started off shocking, when quickly in the first round of Friday night’s Muay Thai battle with Jordina Baars, that this was clearly altogether different.

Justino was not going to be a human tornado leaving destruction everywhere in her wake. For the first time, she was in a real fight and her mental toughness was going to be tested. Then, after the second and third rounds of the Lion Fight 14 battle at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, not only was it clear this a real fight, but that Justino was the one in over her head.

As the fifth round started, it appeared she was going to need a knockout to win. That didn’t happen, and she lost a clear and somewhat lopsided decision.

In the end, the story was simple and obvious. A world champion with somewhere between 35 and 38 fights under this set of rules, and who had never lost, is going to have the advantage over a relative novice with two prior fights. It doesn’t matter that the novice was an exceptional fighter under a completely different set of rules.

It was quickly clear you had the kickboxing equivalent of an experienced matador against a raging bull. What made the fight so exciting is that Justino clearly possessed the power that had to be respected. The story of the fight is she was getting beaten, but at no point until the closing seconds did it ever feel like there was finality in the sense she had no chance of landing a hard enough punch to end it.

But in losing, Justino proved she was not like a lot of front-runners and fighting bullies, the types who are tough and unbeatable until faced with the reality of adversity.

To an experienced fight fan, the conclusion of the fight shouldn’t have been viewed negatively in the least for Justino.
But to the public at large, at least those who saw the fight, or read about it, it was a fighter who had a certain untouchable aura, and now there is a chink.

What happened is a reality of the fighting world. The greatest fighter in the world is determined not by who is the physically toughest, but who is the best under the rules of that specific fight. While that is elementary knowledge, fighting at the very top level is a unique business built as much around fantasy as reality.

There is a reason that boxing promoters and managers would never allow the big money fighters anywhere near an Octagon. And there is a reason why UFC has it written into every contract that their fighters cannot participate in sports like boxing or Muay Thai. UFC even once renegotiated an inherited contract of Nick Diaz over that very subject, the fear that he would take a boxing match, lose, and it would hurt his future main event marketability in UFC.

In reality, Justino’s loss should mean only a little more in MMA than Michael Jordan being humbled on the baseball field meant to basketball fans when he returned. It’s a different sport. She faced a world champion in their own sport under their own rules. Period. End of discussion.

But right now, with UFC in a rebuilding phase, with no “magic” fights on the horizon, one of the biggest potential fights in the sport is Justino vs. Ronda Rousey. For a number of reasons, it is one of those rare fights that can capture the imagination of people who don’t follow the sport closely.

Those are the same people who promoters specifically target when avoiding allowing their top fighters anywhere near playing under somebody else’s rules on somebody else’s turf. And there was a time, when the fighting knowledge of the fan base was pretty limited where these fears were significant.

The question becomes, does the fact Justino lost hurt the business of a future fight with Rousey? The answer is, if handled correctly, it shouldn’t matter at all.

The key to maximize business is for Justino to fight a couple of times in the UFC in a featured position. As long as she wins in impressive fashion, the interest will be there for her and Rousey, provided Rousey also continues to win. Wins on the outside are nice, but they aren’t going to be seen by enough people to make a difference. Plus, the two women seemingly don’t like each other. Neither are shy about talking about the other and making that clear in very personal terms. If there’s anything that the last few years have shown, it’s that a grudge, whether real or exaggerated, is the biggest key in blowing up main event business.

The one thing the fight did do is create the opportunity for Invicta to have a rematch, under MMA rules. The odds are huge that the same story will be in effect there, the great fighter, playing but her rules, will win, and if anything, far more decisively in MMA. For those who aren’t fight fans enough to understand the difference, the end result of the rematch would erase any damage to the mystique of Justino, provided she wins. But if she were to lose in MMA, at that point a match with Rousey would lose a lot of its luster.

Even though wrestling throws aren’t supposed to be part of a Muay Thai fight, Justino was throwing Baars all over the place, several times slamming her down hard. In MMA, there would be no break and stand-up from the position, and Justino has great ground-and-pound. Baars, who is 1-3 in MMA, as compared to either 33-0-3 or 36-0-3, depending upon what source you believe, in kickboxing, is the living proof of just how different these two sports are.

Cris “Cyborg” Justino, the elephant in the room when any discussion of Ronda Rousey as the best woman fighter in the world is brought up, has a battle plan that includes proving late this summer that she can make 135 pounds, and challenge the UFC champion in her own weight class. But first, she battles for the Lion Fight Muay Thai welterweight title Friday night against Jorina Baars.

Cris “Cyborg” Justino is now talking openly about fighting at 135 pounds, with a time frame of the late summer or early fall set for her debut in the new division.

This, of course, is to open the door to fight with UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey.

Making 135 isn’t going to be easy for someone who said she was 165 pounds with four percent body fat before cutting this week. She wasn’t expecting it to be a piece of cake cutting to 145 for her Muay Thai fight on Friday night with two-time champion Jorina Baars of The Netherlands. The bout, a five-rounder to create the women’s welterweight (145 pound) title, airs live on AXS TV, from the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. She’s had issues making 145 in the past, including one fight being only able to get down to 151 before the California commission ordered her to stop cutting over health reasons. But she has made 145 for seven MMA fights and two kickboxing matches since 2009.
Baars, 25, has had her own problems getting fights of late. She has a 35-0-3 record, but it’s been three years since she’s fought last. Baars has claimed nobody in Europe was willing to face her.

But no matter who Justino is fighting, the discussion always ends up in the same place, with Rousey.

She has claimed Rousey is trying to avoid her. Rousey, on the other hand, stated that she believes the failed test has made Justino’s entire career a fraud. She’s always said she would be willing to face her, whether she was clean or not, if she got to 135 pounds. UFC did try and put the fight together last year as it’s first woman’s fight ever. But negotiations at the time broke down over money, and Rousey instead faced Liz Carmouche.

At the time, Justino said, for health reasons, she couldn’t make that weight. But now, among her biggest goals this year is to prove the opposite.

After Friday, her schedule is for a May MMA fight in Invicta at 145 pounds, a July return to Muay Thai with Lion Fights, also at 145, and then making 135 for the first time for an Invicta fight in either August or September.

She said if it was up to her, she’d like to fight every two months, and if there’s an opening, she’s also up for competing in jiu-jitsu tournaments this year.

“I (will) try to make 135,” she said. “I will try. I think it’s very important to make 135 so I can fight for the belt, and because I want to keep that weight class because there are more girls I can fight. I can fight a superfight. I’m already the champ at 145 (she holds the featherweight title with Invicta). I don’t want to be selfish. I want one more belt. If I can fight at 135 for the belt, it’s okay. I can fight at 145 and be more healthy. But it’s not possible at 145 or a catch weight because Ronda is running from me. If I make 135, Ronda can’t run.”

Justino, considered the most ferocious as well as perhaps the most controversial female fighter in the world, is currently doing Muay Thai, a sport she has a 2-0 record in, with the Lion Fight promotion, and MMA with Invicta at the same time. Obviously, her goal would be to face Rousey, the UFC’s bantamweight champion. If the fight can be pulled off, it would be the biggest fight in women’s combat sports history, and could be in the top tier for interest when it comes to fights in UFC history.

But it’s not as simple as it sounds. The fight likely would have been done already had Justino never failed a steroid test, which put a different light on her career. She broke into prominence in the U.S. with a reign of destruction that started with the old Elite XC promotion, when she stopped current UFC fighter and Rousey training partner Shayna Baszler, on July 26, 2008. Billed at first as “The toughest women south of the equator,” the dynamic between Cyborg, the muscular powerhouse, and Gina Carano, the face of women’s MMA at the time with her actress looks, pretty much closed the book on any ideas that women couldn’t effectively main event a big show.

The fight was a gigantic success, setting what was at the time the record for the highest rating for a Showtime fight in history. Carano vs. Cyborg not only drew higher ratings but also sold more tickets in San Jose, Calif., where it took place, than the Fedor Emelianenko fight with Fabricio Werdum, in the same building.

But there was also a lesson. Cyborg, then known as Cris Santos, won the fight, handily. Since debuting in the U.S., nobody has even proven to be competition for her, due to the huge discrepancy in physical power between her and every opponent to date. Marloes Coenen, who lost to her twice, remarked that Cyborg was strong like a man.

From its peak on that night, interest in women’s MMA nose dived as Carano never fought again. It rebuilt with the rise of Rousey starting two years ago. Interest had dropped greatly even before Justino failed a steroid test for Stanazolol after a 16 second stoppage of Hiroko Yamanaka on December 17, 2011. That led to a one-year suspension, and being stripped of her 145 pound title.

The failed steroid test led to a dark period in her life. She divorced her husband, fighter Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos, at that same time. And she was out of the sport for a year. Since Rousey’s Strikeforce bantamweight title moved into the UFC directly, had the drug test failure not happened, Justino’s championship could have as well.

“For me, it was a hard time,” she said. “I know everything happens for a reason. I grew so much personally. I now know who is with me. You find the true people who like you. I always live my life for God. God has good plans for me. I’m always training. I think God wants the best for me. In God I trust, so I’m kept going and kept training to follow my dream.”

She’s been tested frequently since returning, including a recent test ordered by the Nevada State Athletic Commission several weeks before this fight.

“I did a test and I’m clean,” she said. “I tell people, I’ll take a test anytime, so if I make 135, she (Rousey) has no excuse to run anymore.”

She said it was that belief that led to her asking out of the UFC when she was offered an eight-fight deal more than a year ago, and sign with Invicta. The decision kept her out of the main spotlight as women’s MMA exploded in popularity.

“I felt in my heart it was better to go to Invicta,” she said.

“God said go to Invicta and I followed him. The contract with UFC was very hard, eight fights at 135 pounds. I didn’t know if it (making 135 pounds) was possible. I followed by heart, went to Invicta, and fought at my weight.”

While the idea to change training to doing a lot of running to drop natural body weight and get within striking distance of 135 sounds good on the surface, she noted that it’s more difficult than that.

“I love to run,” she said. “I always run. But from running, it makes no change (in weight). I run eight miles every day, no change. I have to change a little my food, my dieting, I change something To make a difference, (I have to) not only run.

“I have to do something different for my health. I think it’ll be okay (making 135). I want to make this. I’ve been disciplined and (am) training to try and make 135.”

The experiment of airing UFC on a Sunday night got off to what should be viewed as a promising start from a ratings standpoint, as the main card for the Dan Henderson vs. Shogun Rua UFC Fight Night 38 was the third most-watched Fight Night since the launch of Fox Sports 1 in August.

The main card from Natal, Brazil, averaged 936,000 viewers from 7 to 10 p.m. Eastern time. The Henderson vs. Rua main event peaked at 1.25 million viewers.

The number compared favorably to Henderson’s last main event, on Nov. 9, also a Brazilian show, on a Saturday night against Vitor Belfort, which did 722,000 viewers for the main card and aired on a traditional Saturday night. It’s also a strong sign for both the day and the main event, since the show had nobody else with ratings drawing power on the main card.

Both shows went against significant sports competition, with college football in the fall, and five NCAA basketball tournament games this past Sunday, including a CBS game that did 11.62 million viewers, all going head-to-head.

With a comparison of two shows, both headlined by Henderson, and both having well known Brazilians as his opponent, the unfamiliar Sunday beating the traditional Saturday would have to be a strong positive and a real surprise. It’s possible that Rua would have had a little more juice as Henderson’s opponent, because the two had one of the greatest fights in UFC history in 2011. But Belfort and Henderson at the time was a more relevant fight since Belfort had far more momentum at the time than Rua, and had a title shot at stake.

Throwing in the competition, it would make one come to the conclusion Sunday may be a better night for UFC on FS 1. But the obvious negative is that Sunday has major problems, because in the fall, it would battle the monster that is Sunday Night NFL football, often the highest-rated show on television. But if nothing else, it shows that outside of football season, Sunday appears to be very viable.

While the number was down from the previous Fight Night on Feb. 15, which did 1.4 million viewers for Lyoto Machida vs. Gegard Mousasi, that number was significantly propped up by a NASCAR race on FS 1 that led in directly to the main card and did 3.5 million viewers, the highest rated show in the history of the station. The other Fight Night to beat this total was the opening night of the network, which had tremendous publicity around it, and featured Rua vs. Chael Sonnen. That show did 1.78 million viewers.

The previous Fight Nights, a Wednesday night in January headlined by Luke Rockhold vs. Costas Philippou, did 629,000 viewers, and the Mark Hunt vs. Bigfoot Silva classic on Dec. 7, on a traditional Saturday night, did 755,000 viewers.

The prelims, doing 369,000 viewers, were also up from prelims before Fight Nights that did 220,000 before Rockhold vs. Philippou and 172,000 before Hunt vs. Silva.

On the flip side, Friday night’s Bellator show, featuring the Attila Vegh vs. Emanuel Newton light heavyweight title unification match, did only 507,000 viewers, its lowest Friday night mark to date. That also went head-to-head with a plethora of NCAA tournament games.

Bellator thus far this season has done, as far as live and same night viewing, 880,000 viewers for its season opener that featured Quinton “Rampage” Jackson vs. Christian M’Pumbu; 699,000 viewers for Daniel Straus vs. Pat Curran for the featherweight title; and 653,000 viewers for Eduardo Dantas vs. Anthony Leone for the bantamweight title.

The season opener, which was built around a light heavyweight tournament with Jackson and King Mo Lawal, was the most-watched Bellator show ever on a Friday night.

Bellator’s Friday numbers in the fall season, when it came to live and same-night viewing, ranged from 520,000 to 793,000. In its first season on Spike in the spring of 2013, it aired on Thursday nights, which is an easier night to draw an audience, and also had a favorable lead-in with TNA pro wrestling.