|
On Wednesday, September 30, 2009, friends and fighters alike gathered inside the "Badda Bing Gentlemen's Club" in Las Vegas, Nevada to celebrate and watch Roy "Big Country" Nelson's debut fight on TUF 10 - The Heavyweights. Big Country would be facing off against the enigmatic Internet street fighting sensation known simply as Kimbo Slice. TUF 10 is televised on Spike and the bout between Big Country and Kimbo Slice became the most watched episode in the show's 10 season history.
The entire upstairs V.I.P. area to the "Badda Bing Gentlemen's Club" was reserved for Big Country and his guests, which started filling in around 8 p.m. The telecast of episode 3 of TUF 10, which features 16 heavyweight fighters coached by "Sugar" Rashad Evans and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, was shown on two large flat screen televisions and began airing promptly at 10 p.m.
Some of the guests in attendance that showed up to show their support of Big Country were TUF 7 champion Amir Sadollah, TUF 8 standout Junie Browning, Cobra Kai's Scott and Mark Bieri, J-Sect's J.R. Sims, and the members of the local band Otherwise. There was roughly 50 or so people that showed up all together, which was the biggest turn out at "Badda Bing" since TUF 10 started two weeks ago. The club has been hosting viewing parties for Big Country, since TUF 10 debuted on September 16th.
The guests that showed up were just a mere fraction of the total viewers that tuned in for Big Country's elimination bout against Kimbo Slice. According to Spike, 6.1 million viewers tuned in to watch the bout and the show drew an average of 5.3 million viewers. That number also makes the broadcast the most-watched episode of an original series in the 6-year history of Spike. These record-breaking numbers surpassed the record that was just set during TUF 10's debut with 4.1 million viewers on September 16th. Prior to TUF 10, the previous record was 2.8 million viewers for the premiere of TUF 3 in 2006.
|