Uriah Hall capped off the third episode of the Ultimate Fighter: Team Jones vs. Team Sonnen with one of the most devastating knockouts in the show’s 17 season history on Tuesday night.
The thunderous spinning head kick that landed with a sickening thud against fellow middleweight Adam Cella’s temple sent him crashing to the canvas for an uncomfortable amount of time as the rest of the cast could only watch until he finally made it to his feet after spending four minutes on the ground.
The knockout was one of the most hyped moments the Ultimate Fighter has had over the last three seasons since the reality show moved to FX, but still the ratings for the latest episode haven’t turned in huge results as of yet.
A Nielsen ratings report received by Bleacher Report on Wednesday confirmed that the third episode of the Ultimate Fighter received 1.191 million viewers for the one-hour show that aired at 9pm.
The ratings reflect a slight drop from the first two episodes, which is always to be expected as a show moves forward during a season, but still with they amount of attention this particular episode received leading up to the show, the numbers still didn’t see an overall increase.
The debut episode of the reality show averaged 1.51 million viewers, while episode two returned with an average of 1.27 million viewers overall.
While the ratings for the third episode declined slightly, the overall trend for this season is much improved over the last two versions of the show that aired on Friday nights in a 10pm time slot.
Both the Ultimate Fighter: Live and the Ultimate Fighter season 16 featuring coaches Roy Nelson and Shane Carwin struggled to find an audience during a very difficult timeslot on Friday nights.
The new time at 9pm on Tuesday nights puts the Ultimate Fighter on a powerful night of television, currently airing in front of the popular drama Justified, which airs at 10 p.m.
The numbers are up overall for the Ultimate Fighter season 17, but the show is yet to find the same kind of success it had while airing on Spike TV for 14 seasons from 2005 to 2011 where the show routinely averaged over two million viewers per episode.
Next week’s show will feature another elimination bout as Team Sonnen’s Kevin Casey faces Team Jones’ Collin Hart.
Damon Martin is a Featured Columnist at Bleacher Report and all information was received first hand unless otherwise noted.
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