Newsflash: Spike TV Broadcasts of UFC PPV Prelims Are a Good Idea

(’Dairy is rape, you son of a bitch!’ Photo courtesy of Fight Magazine.)

You can file this under the category of ‘Things That Should Have Been Obvious Without Any Supporting Evidence,’ but the ratings numbers from Spike TV’s recent broadcasts of select preliminary fights from UFC pay-per-views prove that fight fans actually like seeing more fights for free. As MMA Payout points out, the UFC 109 prelims scored the highest rating yet, despite the lack of big names (sorry Justin Buchholz fans, but it’s true), with an average of 1.7 million viewers for the hour-long broadcast.

This is one of those ideas that, in retrospect, seems baffling for it to have taken this long to come to fruition. The UFC isn’t doing much with those undercard fights anyway – they can’t show all of them, and it’s not like a bunch of people are willing to pay extra online to see Guillard and Torres go three rounds – and, who knows, you might even convince a couple people who were flipping through the channels on a Saturday night to pony up and buy the pay-per-view. Or maybe they find themselves watching Joe Rogan do a thorough analysis of an attempt to clean up ice and they flip back to “Man vs. Wild” reruns. Either way, keep them coming and we’ll keep on watching.  Unless Bear Grylls goes somewhere really crazy, like the moon.  Come on, Man vs. Moon?  Forget about it.  There’s just no way we’re missing that.

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