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Dann Stupp, MMAjunkie.com

This past Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 14 event, which featured a rare appearance by UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva on free basic cable television, scored a 2.1 rating and an average of 3.1 million viewers.

The night’s main event, which featured Silva’s light-heavyweight debut and a first-round TKO of James Irvin, drew a peak audience of 3.8 million viewers.

Spike TV today announced the ratings for the event, which took place at The Palms Las Vegas.

According to near-official figures, Saturday’s three-hour Spike TV broadcast outdrew every other channel—both network television and cable stations—with men ages 18-34 (903,000), men 18-49 (1,550,000), men 25-34 (622,000), and persons 18-34 (1,326,000).

Saturday’s event, a late booking put together to counter Affliction Entertainment’s debut event, also featured notables such as Brandon Vera, Hermes Franca, Frankie Edgar, Anthony Johnson and C.B. Dollaway.

As MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) previously reported, the two highest-rated events in UFC-Spike TV history are UFC 75 and UFC Final Chapter: Ortiz vs. Shamrock III. Each event peaked with approximately 5.9 million viewers.

The highest-rated MMA event on U.S. television—including network and cable TV—was the May 31 “EliteXC: PRIMETIME” event on CBS. The nation’s first-ever live MMA event on U.S. network TV peaked with more than 6.5 million viewers.