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A Promoter's Life
by John Poe
When you think of a Promoter, you think of money, power, and the glitz. Most people see them at the shows hob-knobbing with fighters, ring girls, politicians, and practically everyone. What most people fail to see is what goes on behind the scenes. It's not that glamorous and actually is very stressful. I thought I would share the heartaches and triumphs in promoting a show. This is how it happened and what I went through.
Having been involved in martial arts since childhood, I was drawn into the world of MMA from the start. I don't want to give my actual age, but let's say I was an adult watching the first UFC from my living room. In 2007 I felt secure in my career and decided to make the jump into promoting. I had no clue what I was going to do or how I was going to do this. I initially made a few calls to the Michigan Boxing Commission, from which I never received a return call. I was able to use some friends to get me in touch with the right person. I was amazed to find that, even though there was an exclusion for Amateur and Exhibition Martial Arts, the State considered MMA illegal. I argued back and forth with a couple of people and was basically told that if I tried to host an event I would be served with a cease and desist order to stop it. This really put things on hold. I couldn't afford to lose money because I have a family and responsibilities. I was very happy to hear that the state had finally changed the laws in December of 2007. The down side to it was that the law did not go into effect until March 28th 2008. I began in January, preparing for my first event to be held in April. The following is how things went and just a little insight into what a promoter actually goes through.
I had just gotten off the phone with the State Boxing Commission. MMA is going legit in Michigan and amateur is un-regulated. The state would not be ready for a few months to have the officials in place to hold Professional shows. Therefore I had no choice but to hold an all-amateur show. I began calling every person I knew in the state that dealt with MMA Fighters. No one knew me, no one trusted me, and they certainly weren't going to send their fighters to my event. A friend suggested I make a MySpace page and see how that goes. Well it turned out to be the best tool I have had so far. The problem still remained on the topic of credibility. There are a lot of people out there who will scam you and I understand fighters being worried about it. I still had almost 3 months to get this together and wasn't really worried. One thing I did know was that Ohio had a ton of fighters that would love to break out of their state and do an event. I also began going to events hosted by other promoters, and making contacts. Still I wasn't getting much return on the effort, and I had been running my butt off. I made contact with two teams out of Ohio who wanted to bring 3 fighters each. This was a Godsend. I had my first 3 fights laid out and still over a month away. Then fighters began to pop up all over. Detroit MMA brought in 5 fighters including Cinque Williams, who would go on to win our Heavyweight Title. Things were looking great, except for one thing; I still didn't have a cage. I have been welding since I was young. “I can do this", I thought. I grabbed a couple of buds and we began building our ultimate cage. I wanted and 8 sided cage (can't say the name - you know why) but, also wanted something different. I decided on a full circle cage. I looked at how other cages were built and realized it wasn't that hard to do if you knew what you were doing. It came together quite quickly. I had to use a local company to roll the steel beams, for the out frame work, other than that it was all in house. It all came crashing down when I went to get the frame powder coated. The folks who did the powder coating used the wrong temps and times and ended up ruining several weeks worth of work. I was back to square one. Fortunately I had made several contacts in the local industry and was able to get a nice cage rented to me. Things were finally falling my way.
One week to go and things were doing fine. I had sold enough VIP tables to cover all pre-show costs; yippee I had no bills left. I got notice into 2 local newspapers, ads on the city cable channel, fliers at dozens of local bars (where I was going almost nightly and handing them out to every person in the bars) and the buzz was strong. Then things began crumbling. The arena was trashed and took 2 days to clean. I have to give the city a lot of credit. Their DPW workers did and outstanding job. My wife and friend Rob helped me considerably and the school district really helped with the PA system. The show was going down Saturday night and it was now Wednesday evening. I was feeling good but I was really tired. My cell phone rang and it was an Ohio number. The guy on the other side informed me that he was representing the 6 fighters from Ohio. I was kind of shocked since they were from 2 different teams and were to fight each other. He then informed me that the fighters were not going to be at my show, as they had chosen to fight for a promotion in Ohio. When I brought up the matter of the contract he informed me that they were being paid to go to the Ohio show and our contract was nothing more than a piece of paper. I then told him that I would be calling Ohio to inform them that each of the fighters was stepping from amateur to pro status. That got a very fractured barrage of vulgarity and a hang up. No matter how I felt, I was down 3 fights. This really put a hurting on the event. Things were about to get even worse…
The day of the show was rolling along well. I had the arena looking as best as it could. The cage looked great and things were falling into place. I had set a 4 PM weigh-in time but, had several fighters coming from Ohio and Pennsylvania, so we didn't know if they would be in on time. The main event-ers were there and ready. Chris Bourdon and Dave Gayhart weighed in good for the Lightweight Title; Cinque Williams and Anthony Holder weighed in for the Heavyweight Title. However our Super Heavyweight competitors were coming up short. The guy from Michigan was nowhere to be found and his opponent, from Pennsylvania, was not happy. We were just 3 hours from opening the doors. Alex Puckett of Detroit MMA made some calls and got guys in to fill voids. One of the fighters, referred by a friend, showed up but his opponent was a no show. It actually worked in my favor as it turned out that he was a pro fighter with 12 fights. Just moments before the event began our Super Heavyweight showed. He was in the National Guard and had been out training. We weren't at the 10 fights I wanted but, we did have 7 and they were evenly matched. All-in-all I had 9 fighters as no shows for the event.
The fights went well and the crowd was just insane. Phil Davies, our announcer and fellow promoter, was very impressed with the crowd. The Lightweight Title fight was intense. The first round was a battle and had the crowd on its feet at the horn. The second ended very quickly with a KO just 19 seconds into the round. Then it had to happen. A guy who brought in a fighter wanted to contest the weight of his fighter’s opponent. That was no problem except, the opponent had shown up on time for the weigh-ins and this guy came in about an hour late. So he decided to contest it on the matter of not being present for the weigh-ins. I told him we would handle it after the show had concluded, since we were in the middle of a match and had the main event coming up. He demanded, "His words", that we stop the show and re-do the weigh-ins for his fighters opponent. It wasn’t going to happen. I was not about to stop a fight in the middle, that could have a negative impact on that fight. If we had a problem with one fight we would settle it, not damage the integrity of 2. I ended up having to have him leave. He just would not allow me to finish the show and then redo the weigh-ins. By the way, I had personally weighed in the opponent and he actually weighed 3 ounces less than this guy's fighter at weigh-in.
The event ended without other drama. The fights had been good and the crowd was very happy. I didn't make much money off the event but, I didn't end up in debt either. It took 7 hours the next day to clean everything up. We left the building looking better than we found it. I was able to finally get some sleep. I had been getting about 3 to 4 hours a night and going in each morning at 6:30AM to my full time job and working 8 to 10 hours a day. I was excited and ready to begin preparing for the next event. We had gotten a big boost in credibility from this event. We have a lot of fighters joining the ranks and things are looking good. I still have to put in hours and hours getting things lined up and dealing with the ever changing demands. I am not making millions, but, I enjoy the work.
John Poe is a Fight Promoter who resides in Michigan
You can reach John at his myspace site:
www.myspace.com/combatfightleague
Or at his website:
http://www.combatx.org
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