Fox to air UFC 206 Christmas Eve

The UFC announced that it will air a special presentation of UFC 206 on Fox on Christmas Eve Saturday night at 8pm PT/ET.

The two-hour special on the network will feature Lando Vannata’s KO on John Makdessi, a fight of the year candidate of Cub Swanson vs. Doo Ho Choi, Donald Cerrone-Matt Brown and the main event of Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis.

Payout Perspective:

Dave Meltzer pointed out that strings were pulled to air the PPV within 30 days of its original airing date as distributors have rights to this window.  But, it’s unlikely that anyone would purchase this PPV as initial estimates had it at just 150,000 buys.  The move is very good strategy despite the fact it’s a Saturday night on Christmas Eve.  There is still some leftover from NFL viewers earlier in the evening as most games have been moved to Saturday.  It also gets one of the better quality PPVs on network television with UFC 207 coming up on Friday.  Also, it can introduce the casual viewers to the likes of Cerrone and Hollway.  We will see if it can continue the momentum of last week’s UFC on Fox 22 ratings.