Jason Silva-USA TODAY Sports
This past Saturday the UFC ran two smaller events back-to-back in what was a marathon of a day for MMA fans. Some fans loved it and could do that every weekend, while many (like myself) found it to be laborious and borderline ridiculous. It appears that the television viewing audience didn’t have that kind of patience for lower-end fights, either, because the TUF Brazil 3 Finale was the lowest watched Saturday UFC event broadcast nationally on cable since 2005.
According to Dave Meltzer the TUF Brazil 3 Finale did 609,000 viewers for the main card and, surprisingly, 560,000 viewers for the undercard. That meant that people were tuning in earlier to watch the undercard, which they usually don’t, but the main card didn’t gain the same level of viewers that an average UFC event would. Meltzer is a bit stymied by this, but it does make sense, in a way.
The people who were watching were, in part, the people who had been watching UFC all day. The UFC has a smaller hardcore fanbase who will watch any and everything, even lesser UFC events like these. [source]