Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) co-founder, Campbell McLaren, recently asked why Bellator MMA was still around, which may no longer be a punchline now that his Combate Americas promotion is taking over the airwaves.
Not just the Hispanic airwaves. Everyone’s airwaves.
In fact, last Friday night’s telecast of “Estrellas I” on Univision beat Bellator 197 on Paramount, to the tune of 583,000 total viewers, including 296,000 in the 18-49 year old category. Not too shabby, considering it aired in a later time slot versus prime time for Bellator.
And that doesn’t include the 261,000 streamers on Facebook Live, or the 4 million viewers watching in Mexico.
Leading the charge was featherweight phenom Jose “Froggy” Estrada, who beat the brakes off longtime veteran Rudy Morales. Elsewhere on the “Estrellas” card, boxing icon Amanda Serrano made her cage fighting debut opposite local standout Corina Herrera (full results here).
And after chasing UFC out of Mexico, McLaren and Co. may do likewise in Chile.
“We are clearly the No. 2 U.S. promotion and coming after No. 1,” McLaren told MMAmania.com. “We already beat UFC in Spain and Mexico. Estrellas did one-third of UFC at its top rating at 8-9:00 pm and we nearly matched their last hour. Typically, Spanish is 15 percent of the general market and we were 30 percent of UFC. And they were in prime time.”
No question the sagacious Scot will be looking to replicate his most recent showing with “Estrellas II,” locked and loaded for this Friday night (April 20) inside Gimnasio Nuevo Leon in Monterrey, Mexico (details), featuring the debut of former UFC bantamweight contender Erik “El Goyito” Perez.
Tune in (and thank me later).
For much more on Combate Americas click here.