The UFC 243 prelims averaged 559,000 viewers on ESPN2 Saturday, according to ShowBuzz Daily.
That makes it the lowest-rated pay-per-view preliminary card of the ESPN era. However, in addition to being on the Worldwide Leader’s secondary network, the event had plenty of competition with college football and the Major League baseball playoffs airing on other channels.
UFC 243 took place at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne, Australia, and was headlined by a highly-anticipated middleweight title unification bout between Israel Adesanya and Robert Whittaker. The featured matchup on the preliminary bill was a welterweight tilt pitting Jake Matthews against Rostem Akham.