Strikeforce and NBC Officially Ink New Deal

Mixed martial arts fighting is quickly taking over your television.

You have the multiple offerings from the UFC, including the extremely popular "The Ultimate Fighter" series.

You have the International Fight League which appears on MyNetworkTV.

You have HDNet Fights on Mark Cuban's HDNet, which includes a smattering of different Strikeforce, IFL and miscellaneous offerings.

You have the recently announced deal between EliteXC and CBS.

And now you have a freshly inked deal between Strikeforce and NBC that will see a weekly mixed martial arts show on a major network for the first time ever.

The debut of the show will take place on Saturday, April 12th. It will run from 2 am until 2:30 am ET, just after "Poker After Dark". NBC is placing the show in this timeslot because they believe that the viewing audience for Poker After Dark and mixed martial arts fighting is largely similar and will be a good tie-in together.

The show will be called "Strikeforce on NBC" and will feature full matches, highlights and event footage.

The first episode, due to air on April 12th, will feature Cung Le vs Brian Warren and Duane Ludwig vs Tony "The Freak" Fryklund. Both of these matches will be shown in their entirety. The Cung Le fight is from June 9th, 2006, and the Tony Fryklund fight is from December 8th, 2006. Strikeforce clearly picked these two bouts because they want to push two of their bigger stars, Cung Le and Duane Ludwig. Cung Le currently has an undefeated record and is one of MMA's rising stars, and Duane Ludwig has a rich fight history, having faced the likes of B.J. Penn, Jens Pulver and Tyson Griffin.

This deal makes a lot of sense and will help to push Strikeforce's product to the masses. This is a great timeslot for Strikeforce (due to the young audience that watches Poker After Dark), and making this a weekly offering will encourage viewers to keep tuning in, and eventually they'll familiarize themselves with the Strikeforce product.

Mixed martial arts fighting is absolutely booming right now and all of the major television networks want in. Who's going to sign a deal next?

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