Mark Consuelos puts a ring on it in 'Kingdom'

BY DONNA FREYDKIN

Mark Consuelos remembers the first time he watched DirecTV's "Kingdom," about mixed martial arts.

He was home with his better half Kelly Ripa, holed up in his man-cave.

"When I initially watched it, I did not want my wife watching it with me. I figured it would be a show and I'll get into it and she'd be like. I'm out. The first scene is of Jonathan Tucker's bare ass and he's going at it and she's like, 'I'm in.' Now she's a huge fan," says Consuelos.

That's a good thing, given that her husband co-stars in season two, premiering tonight (season one is out on iTunes). He's a smarmy, somewhat skeevy cage veteran with a secret agenda.

"I'm an ex-fighter. That was so depressing. It means you're too old to be a fighter. He looks like he's got his (stuff) together but you find out he doesn't. It's a little bit like a house of cards," he says of his character.

Consuelos was cast after meeting with creator Byron Balasco in LA. They shared two dozen cups of coffee, and a few months later, he was hired. The network initially worried that Consuelos was too handsome to be an MMA brawler. Consuelos said, gimme a break. His fake tattoos helped, and earned him the admiration of his wife.

"That took a good 45 minutes every day. She liked it -- I'm tattooed and scarred. That's 90 percent of why I did the job, to get the tattoos," he says.

So was Ripa impressed by his performance on the show? "We're beyond impressing each other. It's 20 years. We're done, says Consuelos, who has two sons and a daughter with Ripa.