I just read the Armageddon news about the horrible ratings (a 1.6?!? that's WCW Saturday Night territory!) and read misinformed comments from MMA sites comment pages saying it was because of Mayweather, Avengers, Cinco De Mayo, no marketing of the card or the fighters, or hell maybe it was the supermoon.
This is pretty easily explained with what everyone here knows, and that's with this FOX deal there are way, way too many cards and Dana is thrusting guys into the spotlight who haven't been properly built up on the undercards of major PPV's. Zuffa doesn't seem to grasp this simple concept.
The perfect example is on the Mayweather card you had this 21 year old prospect with a belt fighting on the undercard against an all time great who's over the hill. Alvarez destroyed Mosely on a card that had near two million buys and several million people watching. If you take that same fight and God forbid, try to put it on a PPV of it's own, or on it's own HBO card with another similar marginal fight as an attraction - you probably have about 50,000 TV's tuned in to that. Maybe less, just seeing the non factor the Marquez and Rios dual card was a few weeks ago.
But that's basically what Zuffa is doing. All these guys who would have been watched on a major card are being siphoned off as main events of their own card. That doesn't get them more exposure, it gets them less. People just don't tune in to see that because they haven't been built up. Diaz-Miller should have been on the undercard of a bigger PPV, not main eventing it's own card. Same with Zombie-Poirier coming up. These guys should be stacking a bigger card and getting the rub off of established guys.
Maybe eventually they'll get why ratings didn't do well, and probably won't do well in future cards looking at the lineup. If Zuffa wants to throw me a few grand I'll explain this simple concept to them.