By Brian Hemminger

To  many casual fans, your sport hasn’t really made it big until you get legitimate recognition by a serious sports entity.  In the wide world of sports, there is no bigger sports media than ESPN.  10 years ago, people never respected Nascar, now they have their own daily 30 minute show ‘Nascar Now’ on ESPN.  Poker broke into the mainstream after ESPN started airing their World Series back in 2003.  Could the same thing happen to MMA?

Starting tonight at 1 AM Eastern Standard Time, ESPN2 will air a 30 minute segment of their weekly online mixed martial arts show “MMA Live”.  The show was originally exclusively on the internet, but is making the move to TV after a positive reception.  For now, the show will only air once a week on Thursday nights, but hopefully as mainstream acceptance of the sport grows, so will the show.

This isn’t ESPN’s first foray into mixed martial arts.  ESPN’s Spanish channel, ESPN Deportes had a deal with Bellator Fighting Championships last year, but Bellator moved on to bigger and better things for their second season mainly on Fox Sports Net.  ESPN has also been known to bring in some of the more popular faces of MMA like Brock Lesnar, George St. Pierre, Kimbo Slice and Dana White for brief interviews on Sportscenter and Jim Rome is Burning in the week before their big events.

Tonight they are expected to do a preview of the Shogun Machida rematch for UFC 113 this Saturday night.  I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed, you should too.