UFC on Fox I: An Incredible Network Debut That Should Have Been Much Better

Tonight, the partnership between Fox and the UFC started with a bang, quite literally.  Junior "Cigano" dos Santos did what he has done in all but two UFC bouts: he knocked his opponent out in the first round.

And for all those who thought Cain Velasquez was going to easily run through Cigano tonight, I have just one very important thing to say to you: Told you so!

Cain Velasquez looked tentative even before the fight started.  I'm not sure if it was ring rust or a little intimidation or both.  But the big mistake Cain made was trying to stand and trade with the most dangerous striker in all of MMA.  

Countless articles will be written about those 64 seconds.  But my question is this: 

How did Fox do tonight?  

In a word, they blew it.

They had an hour long block of time to showcase a fight that only lasted one minute and four seconds.

So what did they do wrong? 

They filled up the rest of the time with commercials, that's what they did.  

Sure they did some pre-fight and post-fight banter with Dana White and Brock Lesnar. But in reality, Fox seems to have panicked.  They now had a lot of time remaining and they didn't seem to know what to do with it.

Dana White already told them what they should do with extra time: fill up the balance of the time rebroadcasting the best preliminary fights.  But Fox thought they knew better.  

People seeing the UFC for the first time will mostly just remember that there was a lot of pre-fight chatter, really short fight, a lot of post-fight chatter and a ridiculous overload of commercials.

Fox had their pick of incredible fights from the under-card that they could have used.  

Ben Henderson vs Clay Guida was an amazing fight and a lightweight title eliminator.

There was the Alex "Bruce Leroy" Caceres vs Cole Escoverdo where Bruce Leroy put on an amazing show of agility, acrobatics and flashy moves.

You also had DaMarques Johnson scoring a stunning first round knockout of his own.  

Dustin Poirier finished Pablo Garza with a beautiful D'Arce choke in the second round, this would have been a great introduction to submissions victories for your first time viewers.

Any of these would have been ideally suited to fill up the rest of the time. 

Now we were told that Fox would fill the rest of the time with programming intended to educate viewers.  I must have missed it because I saw nothing of the sort.

Having said that, let's remember that this is nothing new to most of us.  Long-time fans of MMA know that some fights go all 25 minutes, while some end in seconds.  There really is no way to predict when either of these things will happen.

Yet Fox and the Fox Sports team is new to this game, so while we might want to pull our hair out in frustration, we have every reason to believe they will get better at putting on UFC events.

Take it on the chin, Fox Sports, and learn from your blunder tonight.  This was an amazing debut for the UFC but if you had listened to Dana White and the rest of the UFC brass, it could have been so much better.