Following a successful debut season on Spike TV on Thursday nights, Bellator MMA is moving to Friday nights for Season 9 this fall. Spike TV president Kevin Kay revealed the move this week to SI.com . Bellator will kick off Season 9 with a special Saturday live event on Sept. 7, which will also serve as the season finale to its own reality series, Fight Master , but on Sept. 13 will shift to Friday nights for the season. Bellator had its first run on Spike TV from January to April of this year with Season 8, which averaged 862,000 viewers per episode, which includes the industry standard live event plus three days of DVR viewership. The live events alone average slightly less than 793,000 viewers per episode, which was nearly five times better than what Bellator was drawing on its previous network, MTV2. The Thursday night slot for its initial run on Spike included a strong lead-in audience courtesy of Impact Wrestling