The Ultimate Fighter 18 Finale took place on Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas and featured Nate Diaz scoring a victory over Gray Maynard by TKO.
According to Nielsen sources, the TUF 18 Finale preliminary overnight rating for the card landed at 1.129 million viewers.
This is a drop from TUF 17’s finale of 1.71 million people, which aired on FX, but a great number for FS1. When it came to the preliminary card that also did well landing at 938,000 viewers.
The last event for the UFC on FS1 was the UFC 167 preliminary card and that landed at a high of 998,000 total viewers.
When it came to the competition on Saturday night, the biggest issue for the UFC was Christmas specials and College Football. CBS’s The Flight Before Christmas drew 4.20 million viewers (1.1/4 rating), Fox’s Notre Dame vs Stanford drew 2.98 million viewers (0.7/2 rating) and ABC’s UCLA vs USC drew 1.96 million viewers (0.5/2 rating).
Thankfully though, none of these shows including the UFC had to contend with CBS’s Alabama vs Auburn game which was up a whopping 291% from last years Iron Bowl and delivered a 8.6/18 rating, which makes it the second highest rated college football game of the season.
As always stay tuned for all the updated UFC and Bellator television ratings right here on TheMMAReport.com