A middleweight headliner with championship implications brought a
decent amount of eyes to ESPN on Saturday.
According to
ShowBuzz Daily,
UFC on ESPN 22 averaged 935,000 viewers for Saturday’s main
card on ESPN. The five-bout offering didn’t offer a lot of depth,
but it did feature former middleweight king Robert
Whittaker’s entertaining five-round verdict over Kelvin
Gastelum. Additionally, longtime heavyweight veteran Andrei
Arlovski earned a decision win against Chase
Sherman in the co-headliner.
That figure ranks as the top rating for a UFC on ESPN card thus far
in 2021. None of the other three cards on the network this year
topped 721,000 viewers for the main draw. The card had some stiff
competition in the combat sports realm, going head-to-head with
Triller Fight Club’s Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren
event, which reportedly drew more than 1 million pay-per-view
buys.
Meanwhile, the preliminary card averaged 879,000 viewers on ESPN.
That featured bout on that portion of the card saw Alexander
Romanov take a foul-shortened technical split decision over
Juan
Espino at heavyweight. No other UFC on ESPN preliminary card
has reached even 500,000 viewers this year.