The second episode of The Ultimate Fighter 23 debut on Wednesday night and featured Team Claudia’s Cory Hendricks defeating Team Joanna’s Khalil Rountree by rear-naked choke submission in the first round.
According to Nielson sources, the show drew 387,000 viewers in the preliminary ratings (Live+SD) and this is down 19 percent from last weeks viewership of 479,000 viewers in the preliminary rating. In comparison to episode 2 of last spring’s season of the UFC reality show, last night’s episode is down 14 percent from episode 2 of The Ultimate Fighter 21 (454,000).
When it came to the sports competition on cable last night, the night was won by a pair of NBA Playoff games on TNT. The late game between the Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets drew 3.361 million viewers and the early game between the Charlotte Hornets and the Miami Heat came in with 3.130 million viewers.
The +3 DVR viewership for last night’s episode will be released by Nielson on Tuesday and in the debut episode, the viewership went up 47 percent from the preliminary ratings (Live+SD) to the +3 DVR number.