Remember the days when MMA in Asia was just that “violent cage fighting thing” or even worst, people didn’t even know what it was! Well, boy has our beloved MMA come a long long way. Just a few nights ago, ONE Fighting Championship was featured on ESPN SportsCenter. In case you don’t know what ESPN SportsCenter is, it’s one of the most legitimate sports programs around in that thing called “mainstream media”. Yep, thanks to Victor Cui and his crew at ONE FC, MMA in Asia is getting the mainstream media it deserves. Finally our beloved MMA is now a legitimate sport, right next to basketball, football, tennis, cricket (Zzzzzzz) and all other kinds of “mainstream” sports. Hell, if we didn’t have to do more work tonight on coverage for ONE FC’s stacked event this Saturday, we would have already popped the champagne at MMA being recognized as a mainstream sport!

Well, anyway, if you missed the segment from ESPN Sportscenter, we got you covered and you can watch it at the end of this article. You’ll get to see Zorobabel Moreira and his coach Yodchatri Sityodtong from Evolve Mixed Martial Arts speak on their upcoming fight at ONE FC’s War of the Lions event this Saturday. Moreira will be facing Felipe Enomoto in the main event of ONE FC’s War of the Lions card. Zoro looked kind of nervous in the video but still managed to come off as the nicest dude in the world. Sometimes I wonder how this guy manages to be such a beast in the cage. Nice mention of Eddie “The Magician” Ng in the interview as well. That’s one guy who is definitely on the up and up.

TFN has learned from a few independent, reliable sources that ESPN StarSports now has a small minority stake in ONE Fighting Championship. Yup, you heard it – the biggest sports media company and the biggest Asian MMA organization have gone into a business marriage.

So grab a cup of coffee and check out ONE FC on ESPN. It’s a cool to see MMA finally come out of the shadows and into the limelight. It’s pretty clear that ONE FC is on the right path to solidify Asian MMA and more. They have a 10 year partnership with ESPN, numerous media deals and the slew of mainstream sponsors have been announced in the past few days (Carl’s freaking Jr!). ONE FC could make some noise on the international stage before it’s all over and done with.  The video is below:

http://youtu.be/RMcszEB1y1E

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