Bellator 125 drew an average of 742,000 viewers on Spike TV this past Friday night.
That’s down 29,000 viewers from last week’s event, but it’s still a good number for the promotion in their current Friday night slot and suggests that new CEO Scott Coker may already have started to make an impact after taking over from Bjorn Rebney in the summer.
Bellator 125 was headlined by veteran fighter Melvin Manhoef who made his promotional debut in some style with a first round KO victory against Doug Marshall.
While that was more of a ‘spectacle fight’, this coming Friday night they’ll move back to their more traditional format with Bellator season 10 middleweight tournament winner Brandon Halsey fighting current champion Alexander Shlemenko for the belt.
This coming weekend Spike TV will also look to counter-program the UFC 178 pay-per-view card which is co-headlined by former Bellator lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez (who vacated his belt to join the UFC) Vs Donald Cerrone.
Starting at 10pm ET on Saturday night Spike TV will air a 90 minute special on Alvarez re-airing his two classic Bellator title fights with Michael Chandler.
Bellator and the UFC have been clashing more often recently, with the UFC opting to air their UFC Fight Night 50 show on the same night and in the same state as Bellator’s 11th season premiere just a few weeks ago, while Bellator recently announced that they will be broadcasting their Tito Ortiz Vs Stephan Bonnar event on Spike TV at the same time as UFC 180: Velasquez Vs Werdum in November.
