WEC 51 looks to improve on sagging numbers

For all the fans and bloggers who complained about UFC 119, here's Zuffa's payback. A better card, headlined by one of the top-10 fighters in the world and it's essentially costing you zippo. WEC has consistently delivered a great product over the last few years with smaller fighters. There's generally almost no lull in the action amongst the guys between 135-155 pounds. So how come the numbers of viewers are relatively small?

WEC 50 (Cruz vs. Benavidez II): 316,000 viewers
WEC 49 (Varner vs. Shalorus): 324,000
WEC 48 (Aldo vs. Faber): n/a (aired on PPV)
WEC 47 (Bowles vs. Cruz): 373,000
WEC 46 (Varner vs. Henderson): 640,000
WEC 45 (Cerrone vs. Ratcliff): 330,000
WEC 44 (Brown vs. Aldo): 414,000
WEC 43 (Cerrone vs. Henderson): 419,000

MMAforReal says WEC 51 may be in a tough slot Thursday night.

On ESPN, Texas A&M will battle Oklahoma State in college football in a game with some national interest. On NBC, you have popular shows like "The Office," and on FX at 10 p.m. is the ever-popular show "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," which drew 2.21 million viewers for its season debut two weeks ago, the best in the history of the show.

What is more troubling is that "The Office," at 8.5 million viewers for its season premier last week, was No. 1 on television in men 18-34 during its time slot, which will run concurrent with WEC's first half-hour. "Sunny," which airs at 10 ET, saw 45 percent of its audience come from that same demographic, which clearly is WEC's target audience. On top of that, WEC isn't even the only MMA show running on television Thursday as Bellator 31 will be broadcast on FSN.

We'll see if WEC/Versus can make some progress and not post Showtime-like numbers. It's hard to figure with a card that feature Jose Aldo and three former WEC champs -- Mike Brown, Miguel Torres and Jamie Varner. Versus is doing all the right things. The Daily Line features more mixed martial arts than any mainstream sports show on cable television. How could the product love 100,000 viewers from WEC 43 to WEC 50? Maybe it comes down to branding. Without the UFC name and full-blown hype machine, fans just don't know what it is.

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