UFC Fight Night 7 Draws 1.3 Rating

According to a bulletin on Wrestling Observer, Wednesday’s UFC Fight Night 7, which featured a main event of Diego Sanchez and Joe Riggs, scored a 1.3 rating.

Simply put, that means 1.3 percent of all households (or more precisely, U.S. homes with a TV set) were tuned into the event. Anything greater than a 1.0 rating is generally considered successful for a cable channel such as Spike TV.

Wednesday’s ratings were a slight improvement over November’s Ultimate Fighter 4 Finale, which drew a 1.1 rating, but are still lacking compared to events that were held just earlier this year.

The king of all Spike TV specials was Ortiz vs. Shamrock: The Final Chapter, which featured a main event of bitter rivals Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock. The television special drew a staggering 3.1 rating this past October.

For comparison’s sake, here are how the past seven UFC TV events have fared:

• UFC Fight Night 7 (Diego Sanchez vs. Joe Riggs)
  Dec. 13, 2006
  Rating: 1.3
• The Ultimate Fighter 4 Finale
  Nov. 11, 2006
  Rating: 1.1
• Ortiz vs. Shamrock 3: The Final Chapter
  Oct. 11, 2006
  Rating: 3.1
• UFC Fight Night 6 (Diego Sanchez vs. Karo Parisyan)
  Aug. 17, 2006
  Rating: 1.5
• UFC Fight Night 5 (Chris Leben vs. Anderson Silva)
  June 28, 2006
  Rating: 1.4
• The Ultimate Fighter 3 Finale
  June 24, 2006
  Rating: 2.0
• UFC Fight Night 4 (Stephan Bonnar vs. Keith Jardine)
  April 6, 2006
  Rating: 1.6

(A big thanks to Ivan Trembow at ivansblog.com for creating such a valuable resource for past TV ratings. Visit his site for in-depth — and I mean very in-depth — ratings information for previous UFC events.)