
(Props: MMA TKO)
As expected, last night’s Kimbo Slice/Roy Nelson fight drew a record-breaking audience to Spike TV’s “Ultimate Fighter.” While the entire hour averaged 5.3 million viewers, the actual fight portion of the show pulled in, according to the press release sent out by Spike, “a staggering 6.1 million viewers” for what was a predictable and not terribly exciting one-sided victory for “Big Country.” That pummeling now holds the distinction of being the most watched UFC fight ever on Spike TV, so it sounds like somebody really does owe Nelson a Double Whopper with cheese. And God help you if he finds a pickle on there.
You might recall that Spike TV was thrilled when this season’s premiere garnered an average of 4.3 million viewers, making it the highest-rated original program in Spike TV history. The fact that the episode where Kimbo actually fights (or at least the first such episode) smashed that record is probably sufficient evidence to put to rest our theory that this season’s inflated numbers are the result of Darrill “Titties” Schoonover’s fans tuning in en masse.
By comparison, last night’s episode of “The Jay Leno Show “ drew 6.62 million viewers. Granted, that show kind of sucks, but it sucks on network TV, meaning it has a much larger possible audience to suck in front of. The question now is, with Kimbo eliminated from the competition (at least until Dana White pays Tiki Ghosn a cool 40 bucks to back his Ford Escort over Marcus Jones’ knee in order to create a Kimbo-shaped opening in the lineup), will the numbers fall off a cliff? Or are these new fans going to stick around to see what becomes of this Nelson guy?


What’s all this shit about being “impressive”? It’s the first fight he has and he’s supposed to go hog wild? I actually was impressed at how easy and nonchalant Roy acted, as in he didn’t need to go big to win, he humiliated Kimbo by not even really needing to smash him. He could have gone off, but he’s like “Look how easy this is, I can do this all day.”