Just for a bit of cleanup on MMA news this week, here’s the ratings report for last Friday’s Bellator 175 card. This “tentpole” event averaged one million viewers on Spike, peaking at 1.6 million for King Mo’s win over Rampage Jackson. Here’s the full press release from Spike.

Spike’s coverage of Bellator 175 delivered knockout ratings for Spike TV on Friday, March 31. The main event, featuring Quinton “Rampage” Jackson vs. Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal drew 1.4 million viewers, peaking with 1.6 million.

Overall, Bellator 175 tallied 1 million viewers and a 0.9 rating with Men 18-49, ranking #3 in its timeslot.

Under Scott Coker’s leadership, Bellator MMA in 2017 is averaging 993,000 viewers, a 26% increase over 2016, pacing to be the most-watched year ever for the franchise.

Definitely impressive numbers for a Friday night card. When comparing with Bellator’s previous major show of the year, Bellator 170: Ortiz vs. Sonnen peaked at 1.85 million viewers, with an average of 1.4 million on Saturday, January 21st. The promotion had planned for Bellator 172 in February, but Matt Mitrione’s kidney stones forced him out of the night’s main event vs. Fedor Emelianenko.

It’ll be interesting to see what lies ahead for Quinton Jackson, who still clearly has television drawing power. His Bellator contract is up, and supposedly he still has fights left on his UFC deal (which Rampage never fulfilled because Bellator filed a lawsuit to get him back). We may yet see Jackson back inside the Octagon.

Bellator’s next “tentpole” show will be the Madison Square Garden PPV card on Saturday, June 24th. The main event sees Chael Sonnen fight Wanderlei Silva, while Emelianenko fights Mitrione in the rebooked co-main event. Bellator 180 will serve as the de facto “preliminary card” for the PPV, with that portion of the card airing on Spike. King Mo will fight Ryan Baderin the feature bout.