Combate Americas inks first MMA deal with ESPN Latin America for Thursday night show

The Combate Americas promotion will have its largest amount of worldwide distribution in its history for a live event on Thursday night in Mexico City.

The promotion announced on Tuesday that the event would be the first MMA event ever to air on ESPN Latin America. ESPN Latin America is a soccer-rich channel which is available in 47.6 million homes in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

The promotion has regular deals for both live English language broadcasts in the U.S. on UFC Fight Pass and a Spanish language broadcast on Azteca America.

The promotion's biggest exposure is in Mexico, on TV Azteca, a national network, where it has regular Friday night exposure. Its Thursday night live events air on a one-day delay on TV Azteca starting at 11 p.m. Central time.

Between the three television deals, the show will be broadcast into a universe of approximately 187 million homes.

Thursday's show will be the company's first live event in Mexico after running recent shows in Los Angeles and in the Northeast.

The nine-fight show airs at 10 p.m. ET headlined by bantamweights Steve Swanson (14-2) against Gustavo Lopez (6-2). The other main card fights pit atomweight women Nicdall Rivera-Calanoc (9-9) against Lisbeth Lopez Silva (3-3), bantamweights Mark "The Bumblebee" Delarosa (7-0) against Hernandez Flores (8-0-1) and Jose Ceja (4-3) against Joey Ruquet (3-1). The show takes place at El Plaza Condesa in Mexico City.

The four main bouts air live on Azteca America, and later on TV Azteca, while the entire nine-fight card airs live on Fight Pass.

Combate Americas is headed by Campbell McLaren, who ran the UFC in its first few years. Its public face and company president is Alberto Rodriguez, a former MMA fighter best known as pro wrestler Alberto Del Rio.