More than a dozen times during a nearly hour-long interview, Bellator Fighting Championships CEO Bjorn Rebney referred to the cable network Spike TV as "the home of MMA" on television.



Bellator and Spike are both owned by Viacom, and Rebney is gambling that Spike's reach and influence can take his burgeoning mixed martial arts company to the top of the industry.

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It will be a long and difficult road, to be certain. The UFC is almost universally regarded as the major league of MMA and, indeed, it was UFC programming that helped build Spike's brand.

Spike officials, of course, point out that they also helped spur the UFC's phenomenal growth from 2005 through 2011, when it went from near-bankruptcy to a global powerhouse worth in excess of $1 billion while broadcasting its programming on Spike.

"It's fair to say that we did great things for each other," Spike president Kevin Kay said.

For the last year, Bellator's shows were broadcast on Spike's website and on MTV2 as Spike TV's non-compete clause with the UFC prevented Spike from broadcasting any other promotion's fights. The UFC left Spike at the end of 2011 to sign a deal with Fox Networks, which includes live fights and programming on Fox, FX and Fuel.

On Thursday at 10 p.m. ET, Bellator returns to the big-time, so to speak, as it debuts its newest season on Spike to its nearly 100 million television homes. Later this year, it will air a reality series as Bellator attempts to establish and Spike looks to retain its position as a destination for the highly coveted male 18-to-34-year-old demographic that makes up the majority of the MMA fan base.

Neither Rebney nor Kay are willing to say the long-term play is to overtake the UFC as MMA's dominant promoter. But those viewers, whom they say came to Spike repeatedly during 2012 looking for MMA programming, have the potential to make Bellator a major player in the marketplace.

"I've said this many times and I feel very strongly about it, but Spike has established itself since 2005 as the home of MMA," Rebney said. "Whether it's been informal studies or more formal studies and research, younger male consumers who identify themselves as MMA fans identify Spike as the home of televised MMA."

Spike was able to broadcast UFC reruns during 2012 and did so regularly in order to take advantage of the library and to keep itself associated with the sport while it was unable to broadcast live fights.

The question, though, that has yet to be answered is whether those viewers who identify Spike as the home of televised MMA are looking for UFC content specifically or simply MMA from any promoter.

It's a critical difference that could mean success or failure for Bellator as well as millions of dollars won or lost.

The U.S. sports marketplace has long tended to recognize one major league and paid little attention to its competitors. It's been 50 years since there was a legitimate challenger to the NFL and even longer for Major League Baseball.

Bellator's challenge is to gain the interest of the casual fans, who view UFC as MMA. The relatively even numbers drawn by a slickly produced Bellator highlight show and UFC president Dana White's handheld camera-shot video blog indicate the enormity of the challenge Bellator faces in overtaking the UFC brand.

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