Junior Dos Santos beats Cain Velasquez for UFC heavyweight title

The nation caught its first network prime-time glimpse of Ultimate Fighting Championship on Saturday.

But just a glimpse.

Your average channel surfer could have landed on Fox for UFC’s heavyweight title bout between Cain Velasquez and Junior Dos Santos and witnessed everything in the time it takes to cook Minute Rice.

PHOTOS: Velasquez vs. Dos Santos

In short — and the fight UFC President Dana White billed as the biggest in his organization’s history was — Velasquez, the defending heavyweight champion, was gone in 64 seconds.

In front of 14,019 at Honda Center, Dos Santos earned a technical knockout and the heavyweight belt after dropping its former owner with a heavy right hook that connected above the left ear.

“My coach used to tell me, I’ve got pretty heavy hands,” Dos Santos said, “so I try to use them at the start of the fight because it’s a good time to use my power because I’m 100% in the moment.”

The fast finish quelled fears that the fight would conflict with the Manny Pacquiao-Juan Manuel Marquez boxing match scheduled on the same night in Las Vegas.

“It was my fault I didn’t pressure enough,” Velasquez said. “The game plan was to go in and pressure.”

He added: “You can definitely learn a lot from losses. This is no different. I strayed away from the game plan so I’m going to learn not to do that ever again, even for a little bit.”

Velasquez hadn’t fought in a year after suffering a shoulder injury during his one-round demolition of Brock Lesnar in the same arena last October when Velasquez won the heavyweight crown.

Velasquez said he still had some nagging injuries, but the fight didn’t last long enough to notice.

There were 10 fights total, but by design only the main card was shown on Fox.

“For anybody to [complain] about this fight and [that] they didn’t get to see that fight, shut up,” White said.

“You should’ve bought tickets then if you wanted to see all the fights and you don’t want to watch on Facebook.”

White called this a test run for UFC’s seven-year deal with Fox, which begins in January, so the broadcast format could change.

Through the terms of that deal, Fox will air four prime-time Saturday night UFC fight cards a year, and Fox’s cable channel FX will air “The Ultimate Fighter” and six live fights.

This fight earned a live gate of $1.1 million, and though White had predicted it wouldn’t last five rounds, he had to have hoped it would last at least just one.

He didn’t care. The production was all that mattered.

“It was perfect,” White said.

“I agree,” Dos Santos quipped.

PHOTOS: Velasquez vs. Dos Santos

baxter.holmes@latimes.com

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