Shine Fights Promotions is looking to make a splash in 2011 by signing a television deal to bring their brand of mixed martial arts to cable television.
Rebounding from this past summers failed Shine Fights: Worlds Collide event, the Promotion put on a successful one night tournament earlier this fall and has recently signed former “Ultimate Fighter” winner Efrain Escudero to a multi-fight contract.
Shine Fights COO Jason Chambers recently broke the news to MMAWeekly.com about the pending television deal.
“For all intensive purposes we’ve come to an agreement. It’s just a matter of dotting the “I”s and crossing the “T”s. It’s definitely a network that everyone will be familiar with…We’ll be announcing in the next few weeks who that television partner is, we have a great relationship with them now. We’re going to give them some free content, that’s one of the things I think the UFC has done exceedingly well. They’ve built their pay-per-view model off of the exposure they got off of Spike TV, and they’re able to leverage their branding.”
Chambers also noted that the promotion plans on doing six pay-per-view events with the preliminary bouts being shown on television.
Time will tell if this deal for Shine Fights pushes their brand of MMA into the main stream. We’ve all seen how “well” Bellator has done, with rumors circulating that the company might be in financial straights, prime time television may not be ready for mixed martial arts just yet.