Author: John Morgan [kingofabuelos]

The UFC’s first-ever event on Versus, “UFC on Versus 1: Vera vs. Jones,”
held this past Sunday in Broomfield, Colo., drew 1.24 million viewers,
MMAjunkie.com today confirmed.

UFC on Versus 1 marked the first event on the cable channel available to
the 18 million homes serviced by DirecTV after a six-and-a-half-month
service interruption due to a dispute over carrier fees.

The ratings included a 1.66 rating in the males 18-34 demographic, as
well as a 1.21 figure in the persons 18-49 category.

A pair of action-packed bouts from this past Sunday’s UFC on Versus 1
event that did not make the evening’s live broadcast will instead be
featured on a new episode of “UFC Unleashed” that debuts Wednesday
night.

Clay Guida’s submission win over Shannon Gugerty and Brendan Schaub’s
first-round destruction of Chase Gormley will headline the four-fight
new episode, which airs at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Spike TV.

The new episode of “UFC Unleashed” serves as a lead-in to the debut of
the third and final episode of “UFC Primetime: St-Pierre vs. Hardy,”
which previews the main event of this Saturday’s UFC 111 event in
Newark, N.J.

UFC Fight Night 21 headliner Kenny Florian, who meets Japanese legend Takanori Gomi next week on Spike TV, is a featured guest on today’s edition of MMAjunkie.com Radio, as is WEC 48’s Alex Karalexis, who faces Anthony Pettis in April.

Also joining the show is Yahoo! Sports MMA/NCAA wrestling blogger Maggie Hendricks, who will discuss this past weekend’s national championships.

MMAjunkie.com Radio begins at noon ET (9 a.m. PT) live from the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino’s Race & Sports Book. Listen to
and watch a video stream of the two-hour show at www.mmajunkie.com/radio.

DirecTV subscribers forced to survive for months without access to the
WEC’s Versus-broadcast cards rejoiced when the cable television network
was able to strike a deal with the satellite television provider in time
for this past weekend’s UFC on Versus 1 event.

While exact terms of the deal were not disclosed, White said he was
thrilled that the Zuffa, LLC sister-promotions of UFC and WEC were once
again available to DirecTV subscribers.

White also promised that the channel wouldn’t be forced to endure
another outage in the future.

With his UFC on Versus 1 win over Brandon Vera this past Sunday, light
heavyweight Jon Jones (10-1 MMA, 4-1 UFC) seems to have elevated his
status from “bright prospect” to “developing superstar.”

And there is no bigger fan of Jones than UFC president Dana White, who
openly praised the 22-year-old “Bones” following his first-round win.

But despite another impressive performance by Jones in is first-round
win, White said he doesn’t believe his newest star is quite ready for
title contention.

As a reminder, in anticipation of this weekend’s UFC 111 event, the
Ultimate Fighting Championship’s biggest card thus far in 2010, the
company has a full slate of pre-event fan festivities.

Today, the organization is in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, for a fan event
with Canadian UFC fighters Sam Stout and Krzysztof Soszynski.

Hosted by UFC president Dana White, the event takes place at the Toronto
Eaton Centre with a Q&A session, autograph signings, and update on
the UFC’s plans for future Canadian shows.