In the past, I have been a vocal critic of BJ Penn. And while I still have issues with his attitude at times, I can't help but be hella impressed with his performances in the cage.

According to Fight Metric, Penn landed 70% of his strikes last night. That is beyond good, that is awesome. Sanchez attempted approx ten thousand takedowns and got not a single one.

And after last night, I can't help but say this:
It is time for him to make the permenant move to 170.

Penn has not simply been dominant in his title defenses, he has negated virtually all of his opponents' offensive tools, leaving them to merely survive as long as posible. Florian, Sherk and Sanchez are all world class fighters, yet Penn made each one look like they made a wrong turn and ended up in the cage by mistake.

An argument could be made for one or two more defenses, but I see some very real problems with that. The remaining two legit contenders are Gray Maynard and Frankie Edgar. I doubt that anyone, outside of their families, sees either as a realistic threat. What is worse, neither would draw much interest for the casual public. So not only would they almost certainly get killed, nobody would give a shit about the match-ups.

Clay Guida, had he won last night, would have some appeal. Oh sure, he would get completely destroyed, but he is likeble and would appeal to folks enough that some would watch the fight.

One might make the same argument about GSP, but he is not yet interested in moving up and has a couple more viable opponents. He will likely pound Hardy, but Dan's mouth should help build up the bout enough that some will think he has a shot. Koscheck is slowly positioning himself for a shot and he can argue that he won a round from GSP when they previously fought.

Moving Penn up to WW would do two things:
A) Allow the LW division to regain some excitement. The UFC LW division has a handful of great fighters as well as quite a few good ones that deliver the goods. Who would not like to watch Edgar, Florian, Sherk, Griffin and Maynard all battle it out to see who becomes the next champ?

B) The move gives the WW division another legit draw and creates some interesting match-ups. Alves/Penn? Koscheck, Hardy, Daley, Fitch (ok, maybe not after last nights' yawnfest)...all of these sound, at least to me, like good bouts.

M-1/Strikeforce has issued a press release stating:

In total, over 25 million MMA fans all around the world were treated to a vintage performance from the world’s greatest MMA fighter, Fedor Emelianenko. The main event of Fedor vs Rogers reached an impressive 5.46 million viewers in the United States on the CBS Network. The fight was also broadcast in Fedor’s native Russia by “Channel 1,” Russia’s largest television network, and reached 16 million viewers in Fedor’s home country. In addition, “Fedor vs. Rogers” was broadcast to millions of viewers in Korea on SBS, one of the 3 major national South Korean networks, as well as television networks in China, Latin America, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Ukraine, Finland, Africa, Turkey, Israel, Indonesia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Malta. Live internet streams of the “Fedor vs. Rogers” bout generated ground-breaking viewer numbers in Japan and all over the world and these numbers continue to grow through Video on Demand.

That is pretty impressive, but I am having trouble with the Russian number. According to TNS, a media company in Russia, Fedor/Rogers did a share of 12 and a rating of 3.8. I used this translation.

One rating point equals one percent of television households and one share point equals one percent of the televisions in use at the time. Since I can't find any data as to how many households have televisions, I decided to use the most liberal date I could and used the population for Russia: 141 million. Using that, the number would be 5.386 million. That is ten million less than the press release.

Is there anyone here that can provide more insight on these numbers. I just don't see anyway that it comes out to what is being claimed.

I don't want this to be a UFC vs. M-1 argument, I am simply looking for some info.

Right after the Fedor/Rogers card, Scott Coker said he would be announcing the signing of two big Heavyweights in seven to ten days.

That was on Nov 7th. I wonder what has happened that those signings have not taken place. I am sure one was Lashley, as it sounded like it was a done deal. It also seemed likely that Arlovski was the other one.

Maybe they are going to hold off and announce at the next show? If so, it is odd that he would publicly set a timetable for making an announcement.

MAybe the UFC has stepped up and entered bidding? It is the only other reason I can think of.

UFC 105 did a 1.9 rating with a 3.45 in Males 18-34, a 2.84 in M18-49 and an ave audience of 2.9 million. The show peaked, during the main event, at 3.7 million.

The demos are great, as they beat everything else on television that night, but I think the UFC was hoping for slightly higher overall audience. I can't help but wonder what they would have done with the original Penn/Sanchez or even Couture/Evans. No trying to hate on Vera, but he simply is not known to most casual fans.

Pac/Cotto likely hurt a little, but since it was on ppv, I don't think it was too much of an impact.

Personally, I was expecting an overall aud of a little over 3 mil with a peak of around 4.5 million. These numbers are good, but not great (outside of the demos, which are very strong).

Here are the early numbers.

9:00 p.m. – Viewers: 3.50 million (#4), Adults 18-49: 1.5/ 5 (share)
9:30 p.m. – Viewers: 3.53 million (#4), A18-49: 1.6/ 5
10:00 p.m. – Viewers: 4.12 million (#3), A18-49: 1.9/ 6
10:30 p.m. – Viewers: 4.01 million (#3), A18-49: 1.8/ 6

Key demos: Males18-34 (2.2) and M18-49 (2.3) with an ave audience of 3.79 million.
Those are solid. They certainly will go up once the main event is factored in, but that won't be until Tuesday.

For comparison, the first Elite show did an ave of 4.2 million with Adults 18-49 doing a 1.9. That show also saw the main event go late so those numbers do not include Kimbo. But it should be noted that this did better than the second Elite show.

via www.5thround.com

Week two did a 2.2, down from the record-breaking 2.9 of last week.

That rating is still better than anything else TUF has done.

The show did a 4.2 in Males 18-34, 3.2 in m18-49 with an audience of 2.9 million. The replay at 11 did 1.1 million viewers.

I think we are all assuming Kimbo loses next week. While that show should do a huge number, it remains to be seen whether or not there is a drop-off after that. Especially if Nelson beats him by controling him on the ground for two rounds, which is not out of the question.

The overall feedback on Kimbo seems to be fairly positive so I am guessing he still works hard and gets along with everyone for the rest of the season. Even with a loss on the show, Kimbo is slated to fight on the finale. You know the UFC  is going to be careful with who they have him face. These ratings have to have the powers that be grinning from ear to ear.

If they do keep a strong audience for the rest of the season, it will be interesting to see what impact it has on UFC 104-106. If they are drawing...let us say it drops from 3 million down to 2 million viewers a week, if they do 2 mil (still an impressive #) a week, will advertising during the show add to the buy rates of 104 and 106? What kind of numbers will Couture and Vera do for the Spike broadcast of 105?

106 could end up gaining even more momentum from this.

These come from f4wonline:

Daniel Cormier (0-0, 250.2) vs. Gary Frazier (0-0, 245.2)

Thomas Longacre (4-0, 148) vs. Travis Calanoc (4-0, 146.6)

Tyron Woodley (3-0, 171) vs. Zach Light (6-8, 170.4)

Ray Sefo (1-0, 240.8) vs. Kevin Jordan (11-7, 236.6)

Tim Kennedy (10-2, 186) vs. Zak Cummings (10-0, 186)

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Fighters Only magazine has an interesting interview with Mark Dellagrotte in which he confirms that he and Kenny have parted company:

"I think he is going to do well, I think the people he is going with are some of the best in the world. It wasn’t a bad break or anything like that, it was just a mutual decision we made in order for us both to move forward. It was necessary for Kenny to move forward with his career and me to move forward as a coach."

He also confirms that there have been problems between him and Keith Florian:

"I have to stress that I have nothing negative to say towards Kenny or his brother. Its not his brother’s fault, it’s not my fault, its just one of things that happens in sports like this," the Boston man says. "There has been a constant… ‘power struggle’ between me and his brother Keith. We never really got along - which is not anybody’s fault, some work well together and some don’t.
 
"We worked well together at first but over the last few camps and fights we put together, there were differences and I am just the type of guy that if I can’t steer the ship, if I can’t be the captain, I would prefer not to be onboard."

Reading the entire thing, it really does sound like things are good between Kenny and Mark. Too many bad splits out there, it is nice to see these guys were able to do so without burning bridges.
 
I know that Keith has always been an important figure in Kenny's personal and professional life, but I question how well he will be able to steer Kenny's career. After the BJ fight, I could not help but wonder if Kenny and Sherk got their plans mixed up as neither seemed to embrace their strengths.

Photo via ThatGirlisFunny.

Dana White, on Twitter:.

 

Tuf 10 premier did 4.1 million viewers last nite!!!! Thank you all very much. You are the best fans in sports!!!

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Antonio Nogueira 460k* (250k to show, 150k to win, 60k Fight of the Night bonus) def. Randy Couture 310k* (250k to show, 60k FotN bonus).

Thiago Silva (29k to show, 29k to win) def. Keith Jardine (55k to show).

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