Saturday nights CBS broadcast of the “Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Rogers” event netted a viewer high of 5.46 million viewers during the main event bout between Fedor Emelianenko and Brett Rogers.

The average number of viewers for the evening totaled 4.04 million which earned CBS a 2.5 household rating.

The show scored top ratings in the adults 18-34 demographic for men, beating out college football and was an improvement of 283% on CBS’ season-to-date average on Saturday nights.

CBS previously brought MMA to major U.S. network television for the first time in history in 2008 with the now-defunct EliteXC promotion. The three CBS-EliteXC broadcasts drew total audiences of 4.85 million viewers (May 2008), 2.6 million viewers (July 2008) and 4.56 million viewers (October 2008) before the organization’s eventual financial collapse a few weeks after that last show.

The solid ratings mean Strikeforce should return to the CBS airwaves in early 2010. Strikeforce and CBS executives were mum on future plans last week during pre-event festivities for “Fedor vs. Rogers.”

“Those are decisions that will be made next week once we’ve had a chance … to look at the numbers,” Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com).