Ronda Rousey made her long awaited return at UFC 207 last Friday night to take on UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion Amanda Nunes, but it wasn’t in the traditional Saturday night time slot. A poor performance precedent set by the Brock Lesnar vs. Alistair Overeem headlined UFC 141 card back in 2011 that only drew a reported 550,000 buys had many doubt that the off-night Pay-Per-View would be a financial success.

Early television ratings suggest the critics were wrong to doubt the drawing power of Ronda Rousey.

As Dave Meltzer of MMAFighting.com first acknowledged, even with limited media exposure from the main eventers, having the prelims bouts compete with the Orange Bowl game, and being on a Friday night — UFC 207: Nunes vs. Rousey is trending to do one of the biggest numbers in company history.

Even though the event is still set to trail behind UFC 196: McGregor vs. Diaz, UFC 200: Tate vs. Nunes, UFC 202: McGregor vs. Diaz II, and UFC 205: Alvarez vs. McGregor — which all broke the million-dollar PPV mark, the televised preliminary bouts averaged 1.5 million million viewers. The prelims were headlined by Neil Magny and Johny Hendricks, who managed pull in ~1.8 million viewers for final two-rounds of the 173.5-pound catchweight bout.

Ronda Rousey was defeated by UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion Amanda Nunes in just :48 of the first-round at UFC 207.

The pre-fight and post-fight shows on FS1 did 572,000 and 404,000 viewers respectively.

Do you think Ronda Rousey’s UFC return draw north of a million buys or perhaps break the all-time company Pay-Per-View record currently held by Conor McGregor?

Let us know what you think on Twitter @MMA_Newsline!