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On Saturday night MMA fans witnessed what many believe was the "Fight of the Year" between Donald Cerrone and Ben Henderson. Unfortunately it appears that few fans actually watched the event.

MMA Junkie reports the ratings for WEC 43,

This past Saturday's broadcast of WEC 43, which featured Benson Henderson's decision victory over Donald Cerrone for the WEC's interim lightweight title, drew a television audience of 419,000 viewers, MMAjunkie.com has learned.

The Oct. 10 event, which took place at the AT&T Center in San Antonio and drew 5,176 spectators, aired on Versus.

Ratings were down approximately 37 percent compared to WEC 42 in August, though Versus has been in a state of flux in recent months.

For a reference point 400,000 viewers is approximately a .4-.5 rating. The good news for Versus is that WEC 43 outdrew the UFL debut, which in turn beat out Versus normal NHL coverage.

WKR was afraid of this.

Versus dispute with DirecTV was clearly a factor in the drop off in ratings. After all, losing DirecTV's 24 million subscribers is a blow to any station.

It probably wasn't just the loss of DirecTV subscribers that resulted in the 37% drop in ratings. WEC 43 went head-to-head with the LSU-Florida football game on CBS and the Iowa-Michigan game on ABC. Competing against a marquee college football game with national title implications is difficult for any sport.

When the WEC postponed WEC 43 to Saturday October 10th many observers questioned the decision to move from their traditional Sunday night broadcast to a Saturday night broadcast. Granted, had the WEC stuck with a Sunday date they would have gone head-to-head with Sunday Night Football.

It also didn't help that WEC 43 didn't have any of the promotions big stars on the card.

MMA observers should look forward to WEC 44, which features a featherweight title fight between Mike Brown and Jose Aldo, to see if the ratings rebound. If the numbers don't rebound to pre-dispute numbers then it would indicate what kind of damage the DirecTV dispute has caused to the WEC audience.

[Update: Note by Zak Woods, 10/14/09 1:31 PM EDT ]

Zuffa has announced that WEC 43: Cerrone vs. Henderson will be available at UFC.com and WEC.tv.

Maybe this way people will actually get to see what could end up being "Fight of the Year."

WEC 43: Cerrone vs. Henderson coverage