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TV ratings battle
By Zach Arnold | January 19, 2006
WWE RAW – 4.3 rating, UFC Ultimate Fight Night – 1.7 rating.
That is strong. Very strong. Debate the implications in the comments section.
Topics: All Topics, MMA, Pro-Wrestling, UFC, WWE, Zach Arnold | 3 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback | Share This
Those are very strong numbers. I wonder if the Flair/Edge match wasn’t a TLC match, if the ratings had been so strong. I don’t know the quarter-hours, but I would guess that Flair/Edge was the highest rated segment.
I think this demonstrates again the cross-over between the audiences of Pro Wrestling and MMA. A 1.7 is a very solid number for an Ultimate Fight Night without a lot of star power. Hopefully the strong showings continue for them.
Personally, I’m not really convinced that the cross over audience between Pro Wrestling and MMA is really that significant. During the first few UFC televised events (TUF 1 finale, UFN 1, etc.), there may have been an audience drawn into the UFC scene (maybe to the point of having them favor the UFC card instead of the WWE one when they are competing consistently), but I think most of the cross over interest has decreased.
I personally believe that the entertaining TUF 2 finale may have had more to do with the increased ratings as it showed UFC in a positive light in terms of quality fights than any WWE audience initially drawn towards this month’s ’supercard of death’ to try and compete actively with the UFC’s market.
I would tend to agree with Tomer in the idea that the UFN shows are building up steam and reputation based on the level of fights. There numbers may begin to lessen however when the shows become more constant. From observing my friends, and people who aren’t hardcore MMA fans, I’ve noticed that the appeal of these shows is that they seem special. Obviously the finals of TUF are significant, this one was a big deal due to all the announcements and the #1 contenders fight, although that ultimately turned out to be a tad dissapointing.
The WWE numbers don’t suprise me as they had two ppv level matches going into this show, Angle/Micheals and Edge/Flair. It’d be interesting to see the quarter hours just to see how each of these individual segments did, as I could totally see people tuning in for Angle/Micheals, then basically sparidically tuning out till Edge/Flair.
The idea of a war between UFC and WWE is somewhat ludicrous to me. Vince has spent most of the last twenty years telling everyone wrestling isn’t a sport. It’s entertainment, wrestlers aren’t athletes they’re hollywood actors. The reason MMA threatened Japanese wrestling is that much of Japanese wrestling was built on the prinicipal of fighting, NJPW especially. Inoki used to work martial artists and famous fighters. Inoki built his entire company around the idea that wrestling was not only a sport, but a dominant fighting style. Wether or not people legitamately believe that is suspect, but much like the whole sports entertainment deal it’s about suspending disbelief. This becomes hard when you have Yuji Nagata getting knocked out by Mirko Cro Cop in under a minute, or Jushin Lyger getting choked out by Minoru Suzuki.
The threat to WWE is lessened also by the fact that America isn’t a fight culture. In Japan martial arts are traditional, just as in America football and baseball are traditional sports. If anything I see MMA becoming like Boxing, with it’s popularity being just under the mainstream, with the exception of the occasional Charismatic champion, See Muhammed Ali, Mike Tyson, or Oscar De La Hoya. However because it’s a fighting sport it’ll always be seen as sub-mainstream. In essence my point is that WWE and UFC are too different to be a threat to one another.