A packed weekend of fighting saw Bellator 202 “Budd vs. Nogueira” take place July 13 and Bellator 203 “Pitbull vs Weichel 2” happen July 14, 2018. Ratings data is now available for both shows.
Bellator MMA ran back-to-back fight cards in one weekend with Bellator 202 “Budd vs. Nogueira” going down July 13 and then Bellator 203 “Pitbull vs. Weichel 2” airing via tape delay on Paramount Network the very next day. Both Julia Budd and Patricio Freire retained their titles in fights staged thousands of miles apart.
In terms of their ratings power, the two cards were much closer, though Budd delivered the stronger performance of the two Featherweights. Bellator 202 averaged 493,000 viewers and peaked at 817,000 for her title defense, according to data released to MMAmania.com by Viacom.
Fighting what they referred to as “a crowded sports night” on Saturday, Bellator 203 delivered an average of 471,000 viewers. Curiously, the peak seems to have NOT been the rematch between “Pitbull” and Daniel Weichel but the one-sided beating Alessio Sakara gave Jamie Sloane en route to his 20th professional win and 14th knockout. He pulled a peak of 702,000 viewers.
If you did stick around for all five rounds of the main event, you got to hear Pitbull call out Conor McGregor’s entire team and call them all “easy” to beat.
Perhaps James Gallagher would like to have a word with him about that.
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