The UFC is still doing great business on TV and their counter-programming to the Strikeforce event which took place last Saturday “averaged 1.9 million viewers for the 3 hour telecast,” according to a release from the UFC. 

Going head-to-head with Strikeforce was the UFC replay of UFC 94 which featured Georges St. Pierre vs. BJ Penn, a recent PPV that took place in January. Despite being a reply, the fight between Georges St. Pierre and BJ Penn which was one of the most anticipated bouts in UFC history, has turned into a side show of sorts with allegations of  cheating thrown at Georges St. Pierre and their camp by BJ Penn. A formal complaint was even lodged by the BJ Penn camp into the allegations.


The unintentional payoff for the UFC was #1 rating for the program amont ment 18-34 in all of television (cable and broadcast) during its time period, which was coincidentally the same time as the Strikeforce card which took place at the HP Pavillion in San Jose and featured a main event of Nick Diaz vs. Frank Shamrock. Now before people jump on the UFC for doing as much it is worth nothing that this is nothing new to television.

Counter-programming has been common practice in the cutthroat world of TV for years, and has been popular long before the UFC was on TV. In fact, the UFC has counter-programmed events in the past offering free UFC PPV replays against Affliction 1 and Affliction 2. The difference here is that the UFC's Dana White does not appear to have a problem with Scott Coker and the Strikeforce team, while his relationship with Tom Atencio and the people of Affliction has been contentious at best.

According to the same release which is available on UFC.com,


“UFC 94 on Spike TV drew a 1.4 household rating and a 1.6 among Men 18-49 (878,000), a 1.3 among Men 18-34 (387,000) and had an average audience of 1.9 million viewers. By comparison, HBO’s live coverage of “World Championship Boxing: Winky Wright vs. Paul Williams” on drew 1.5 million viewers.”