Last night the UFC held their first big fox show of 2012 on FOX, offering up three fights live and according to initial estimates the ‘UFC On FOX 2’ show was watched by an average of 4.37 million viewers.

It should be stressed that these are early estimates courtesy of TVByTheNumbers and are expected to rise upwards as more data arrives. We likely won’t have solid numbers on both the average viewers and the peak audience for the broadcast until later next week.

Here’s how the numbers break down so far though:

8-9pm: 3.98 million viewers

9-10pm: 4.77 million viewers

The show also clocked an estimated 2.2 rating for adults 18-49 and was the top rated program for that category of the evening which is a positive sign. ‘UFC On FOX 2’ benefitted from a relative lack of competition on Saturday night with re-runs and Skating championships being it’s main competition during it’s time slot.



By way of comparison, November’s ‘UFC On FOX 1’ broadcast which featured just one fight during an hour-long broadcast produced an average of 5.7 million viewers, peaking at 8.8 million during the heavyweight title showdown between Junior Dos Santos and Cain Velasquez.

However, again I’ll repeat, today’s numbers at just initial estimates and fall roughly into line with the numbers (4.6 million) that initially came out for ‘UFC On FOX 1’ before later figures saw them rise substantially. Stay tuned as we’ll be updating as soon as we get our hands on the updates stats.

Last night the UFC went with three fights, Rashad Evans Vs Phil Davis and Chael Sonnen Vs Michael Bisping (both of which were for No.1 contender status in their respective divisions), plus Demain Maia Vs Chris Weidman.

Unfortunately the event turned out to be a lackluster affair with all three fights going to a decision and both the Evans Vs Davis fight and in particular the Maia Vs Weidman bout failing to deliver the kind of up-tempo action and ‘wow’ moments that we’ve come to expect from big nights of UFC action.

It’ll no doubt come as a disappointment to all concerned that the action would falter on the promotion’s most important show of the year so far as they’ve actually had a terrific run of fights in 2012 up until this point, with both UFC 142 and UFC On FX 1 last weekend delivering a host of scintillating bouts and memorable finishes.

The UFC will have plenty of opportunities to improve on this showing however as this is just the very beginning of their seven year deal on FOX. Plans for ‘UFC On FOX 3’ are already underway, with the event believed to be on course for May 5th in New Jersey.