Promoted to the front page from the FanPosts by Cannon Jacques.

From MMA Junkie:

Season two of Bellator will commence this fall, and with its success this season on ESPN Deportes, the rookie fight promotion could find itself with a bigger ESPN audience for the second go-around.
. . .
"Our [April 17] show (in Oklahoma) ran last week, and a replay 48 hours after the original broadcast did a 1.2 (household rating)," Rebney said. "That's a great number especially for a replay. Anything over a 1.0 is pretty strong."
. . .
"It would be really cool and interesting to see if we're doing 1.2s on replays right now on a Spanish-language network, what would be doing if we were on ESPN2 right now?" Rebney said. "I've got to assume the numbers would be out of this world."

There's no doubt that the amount of  advances in the coverage and display of MMA in the past few years have been great. A few years ago, if you said that eventually there would be a network that's dedicated to showing regional events all over the country (HDNet), that ESPN would actually put their support towards a webshow dedicated to the sport, and one day live MMA would air on network television (CBS), you would have been considered...well...an optimist with really high (read: unrealistic) hopes. But yet here we are.

Now after all of that progress could this be the watershed moment we have all been waiting for? There's always talk about MMA eventually breaking through becoming "mainstream". Is this where it starts?

Consider this: ESPN Deportes is available in approximately four million households. ESPN and ESPN2 are available in nearly 100 million each.

Color me excited.

Fronted by Luke Thomas.

From Sherdog:

One notable name missing from an official list of possible participants released for the New Year’s Eve extravaganza was Dream's biggest rating draw, Yoshihiro Akiyama. Akiyama is reportedly no longer under contract to FEG, while fighter and promotion are rumored to not be on good terms.

A move to rival outlet Sengoku is likely, as Akiyama has expressed interest in facing fellow judoka, Hidehiko Yoshida, in what would be a huge money match. Akiyama is also believed to be in talks with the UFC, as Zuffa is said to be building their ranks for a possible Korean invasion.

After living in South Korea for a few months and being exposed to the nation's sport channels, I can honestly say whenever a Korean athlete does well in America it's covered like an event in their home country. Simply by watching the commercials, you would think the Colorado Rockies needed to be renamed Byung Hyun Kim and the Other American Dudes.

An event with Akiyama and "Stun Gun" Kim on the same card would do wonders for the UFC's popularity in South Korea. Of course, the judoka vs. judoka battle of Yoshida/Akiyama would do the same for WVR. But what does this mean for DREAM? From data in the past, it's easy to tell that Akiyama is their best ratings draw. FEG's executives have promised that DREAM will still be around for a while but without the heel "Micheal Jackson" on their cards who will bring in the viewers?