The UFC made its long awaited debut on ESPN and ESPN+ Saturday night with UFC Fight Night Brooklyn which showcased flyweight champion Henry Cejudo defending his bout versus bantamweight champion TJ Dillashaw.
The shocking upset win — a TKO finish in 32 seconds — as well as a stellar featured bout on ESPN carried by Donald Cerrone, reportedly made the event a resounding success for both the MMA leader and its new broadcasting partner.
“We murdered it tonight. It was by far the biggest event ESPN plus has done by a long shot,” said UFC President Dana White in his post-event media session Saturday night. “When I tell you we beat expectations, we murdered expectations.”
The actual numbers were released by ESPN public relations Sunday showing a 1.4 peak Nielsen rating for the prelims on ESPN and 568,000 ESPN plus subscriptions added over Friday and Saturday alone. Those are some big numbers indeed. The 1.4 Nielsen market share for the 8:15-10 p.m. eastern time slot equates to the biggest audience for a pre-lims telecast on cable since at least 2013 according to ESPN. Hell, it eclipses several of the recent Fox Sports 1 main cards.
The live portion on ESPN featured the debut of Brazilian flyweight Arianne Lipski fighting Joanne Calderwood, light heavyweights Alonzo Menifield and Vinicius Moreira as well as bantamweights Mario Bautista and Cory Sandhagen.
Sandhagen (10-1) kicked off the UFC’s start on ESPN with a solid debut performance. He landed a flying knee to Bautista that along with a push, sent his opponent to the canvas where Sandhagen got the finish via armbar submission at 3:31 of the first round.
And while both subsequent fights were entertaining (Calderwood unanimous decision victory over Lipski and Menifield’s TKO finish of Moreira), it was the tilt between lightweights Alexander Hernandez (10-2) and “Cowboy” Cerrone (35-11) that likely brought the eyes to the screen.
The featured bout on ESPN was an eight-minute slugfest which earned “fight of the night” honors is an early contender for fight of the year. Cerrone, a UFC veteran of 40 fights, made his return to lightweight a resounding success as he overwhelmed Hernandez, a rising prospect who had won eight consecutive bouts coming in.
Cerrone’s head kick knockdown followed by ground and pound to earn the TKO stoppage at 3:43 of the second round earned him another $50,000 and a performance of the night bonus. Thus Cowboy took home an additional $100,000 to his $350,000 purse (show + win bonus + Reebok allotment) and extended his lead as UFC bonus king.
Flyweight division status remains a mystery
“Don’t ask me,” White said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
That was White’s response to a question posed to him regarding the Henry Cejudo’s next challenge and the future of the flyweight division as a whole. The UFC President had been non-committal all week about the division’s future seemingly hinting at its demise. Only White remained uncertain of both Cejudo’s next bout as well as what he wanted to do with the division as a whole.
“I said we’ll see what happens,” White said. “I didn’t say I’d have an answer on Saturday.”
Hardy will stick around
Another story coming out of Fight Night Brooklyn was the UFC debut of Greg Hardy and his disqualification via illegal knee. However disappointing it was to Hardy (3-1) and his team, White was able to chock it up to a “rookie mistake” and liked his heavyweight prospect’s debut overall.
White pointed to Hardy’s punching power, ability to withstand powerful punches himself and get up from being taken down as reasons to be impressed with the former football player’s MMA future.
Hardy’s UFC career appears to have some stay.
“Yeah, he’ll get another fight,” White affirmed. “He made a big rookie mistake and it cost him an ‘L’ tonight.”
Sports, film and life 