UFC On FOX 1
When the UFC signed a television deal with FOX in 2011, their big debut on the main ‘FOX’ channel was expected to smash their TV record as they lined up a heavyweight title fight between Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos, which Dana White declared to be, “without a doubt the biggest fight in UFC history.”
However, the puzzling decision was made to make the broadcast only one hour long and only feature the main event, which proved to be a big mistake as Dos Santos would go on to knockout Velasquez in just 64 seconds.
The peak audience of 8.8 million viewers during the fight then quickly evaporated as the talking heads back in the studio were left filling time dissecting in painstaking detail the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fight.
Despite having many more events on ‘big’ FOX over the years, the UFC never again came anywhere close to reaching the audience they did on that anti-climactic night.
