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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Urijah Faber's return to Versus brought the second most viewers for a WEC event in 2010, as last week's WEC 52 event brought an average audience of 570,000 viewers to the network, according to MMAJunkie.com.
It was the best rating for a WEC event since January's WEC 46: Varner vs. Henderson, which brought 640,000 viewers on average.
Last Thursday's event saw Faber debut in the bantamweight division, where he choked out Takeya Mizugaki in the first round of their main event fight. The card also featured wins by Faber's Team Alpha Male teammates Chad Mendes and Joseph Benavidez, and brought a rating of .79 in the M18-34 demographic.
Faber has headlined four of the top six rated events for the WEC on Versus, and also headlined the WEC's only pay-per-view offering this April.
Penick's Analysis: This is another reason for the merger with the UFC. If this event had been a "UFC Fight Night" on Spike, it would have gotten at least double the viewers that this card did, and having Faber on Spike or pay-per-view is going to help the UFC increase his star power further as well. It's a shame that an event of that quality wasn't seen by more people, and that's just one of the many reasons why it will be good to get these fighters into the UFC in 2011.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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