Tag: Ken Pavia

Ken Pavia Opens Up on UFC Lawsuit

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Last year the UFC filed a lawsuit against Bellator Fighting Championships and MMA agent Ken Pavia, claiming that Pavia gave confidential UFC documents to Bellator.

Pavia, who has since sold his MMA agency, says he didn’t give Bellator anything confidential, and that the lawsuit will show that.

“The claim is that I shared confidential and secret information with a competitor that gave them some sort of advantage,” Pavia said on The MMA Hour. “Time will tell I didn’t. Did I share confidential information? Documents were passed, and we’ve been very forthright about that, and our contention is that they’re a few documents that are readily available to the public. Google them. They’re all there. They’re all on the Internet. … I guess I just saved them probably two hours of Googling.”

Pavia said some people have assumed he sold the agency because of the suit, but that in reality the vast majority of fighters he was representing at the time stayed with him.

“My reputation took a little bit of a hit, which is unfortunate because a year and a half into it I think I’m going to be vindicated eventually. I feel very confident,” Pavia said.

According to Pavia, Bellator didn’t even have any use for the documents in question. Eventually, Pavia expects all the facts to come out, although he doesn’t know when that will be.

“We’re a year and a half in and we haven’t even begun discovery,” he said. “The American legal process, I guess.”

 

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Last year the UFC filed a lawsuit against Bellator Fighting Championships and MMA agent Ken Pavia, claiming that Pavia gave confidential UFC documents to Bellator.

Pavia, who has since sold his MMA agency, says he didn’t give Bellator anything confidential, and that the lawsuit will show that.

“The claim is that I shared confidential and secret information with a competitor that gave them some sort of advantage,” Pavia said on The MMA Hour. “Time will tell I didn’t. Did I share confidential information? Documents were passed, and we’ve been very forthright about that, and our contention is that they’re a few documents that are readily available to the public. Google them. They’re all there. They’re all on the Internet. … I guess I just saved them probably two hours of Googling.”


Pavia said some people have assumed he sold the agency because of the suit, but that in reality the vast majority of fighters he was representing at the time stayed with him.

“My reputation took a little bit of a hit, which is unfortunate because a year and a half into it I think I’m going to be vindicated eventually. I feel very confident,” Pavia said.

According to Pavia, Bellator didn’t even have any use for the documents in question. Eventually, Pavia expects all the facts to come out, although he doesn’t know when that will be.

“We’re a year and a half in and we haven’t even begun discovery,” he said. “The American legal process, I guess.”

 

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The MMA Hour With Rich Franklin, Matt Mitrione, Brandon Vera, Curran, Pavia

Filed under: UFC, MMA Fighting Exclusive, VideosThe MMA Hour is back in your life on Monday at 1 p.m. ET for our 104th show. Here’s a list of who will be stopping by:

* Former middleweight turned light heavyweight Rich Franklin will talk about his rec…

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The MMA Hour is back in your life on Monday at 1 p.m. ET for our 104th show. Here’s a list of who will be stopping by:

* Former middleweight turned light heavyweight Rich Franklin will talk about his recent shoulder surgery and what’s next for him.

* UFC light heavyweight Brandon Vera will discuss his UFC 137 fight against Eliot Marshall.

* Heavyweight Matt Mitrione will return for another installment of “The Mitrione Minute.”

* Bantamweight Jeff Curran will talk about returning to the UFC to fight Scott Jorgensen at UFC 137.

* MMA agent turned entrepreneur Ken Pavia will talk about selling his MMA agency and teaming up with Takedown Fight Media.

* And MMA Fighting’s Ben Fowlkes will dissect the news making headlines around the MMA world.

Of course, we’ll be taking your calls. Give us a shout at: 212-254-0193, 212-254-0237 or 212-254-0714.

*** You can also stream the show live on your iPhone or iPad by clicking here.

Watch the replay below. Subscribe to The MMA Hour on iTunes: audio feed here; video feed here. Download previous episodes here. Listen to the show via Stitcher here.

(Editor’s note: The MMA Hour is now over and the video will be available Tuesday or Wednesday.)

 

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Malki Kawa Explains Recent Twitter Spat With Fellow MMA Agent Ken Pavia

Filed under: UFC, NewsThough Malki Kawa has been around for a while, his quick entrance onto the MMA radar screen wasn’t even a year ago.

When Matt Mitrione publicly fired Kawa, then his agent, after UFC 119 in Indianapolis, Kawa suddenly was the hot…

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Though Malki Kawa has been around for a while, his quick entrance onto the MMA radar screen wasn’t even a year ago.

When Matt Mitrione publicly fired Kawa, then his agent, after UFC 119 in Indianapolis, Kawa suddenly was the hottest name in the sport. The superagent has parlayed that notoriety into a budding empire of major-name talent under his First Round Management stable.

But as Kawa has found out, with more popularity comes more criticism. Mo’ money, mo’ problems – even from competing agents.

Kawa recently engaged in a short Twitter spat with fellow MMA agent Ken Pavia. But Kawa told Ariel Helwani on Tuesday on “The MMA Hour” that there is no official fight brewing between the two.

“(There’s no beef) whatsoever,” Kawa said. “I think Ken is just a little upset that at one point he thought he was the best agent in MMA. He’s fallen off completely. He’s got problems with the UFC, he’s over there at Bellator, the whole nine. And he decided to pick something with me to get attention.”

Pavia, who runs MMAagents, became embroiled in a legal action between the UFC and Bellator last summer. Pavia was alleged to have provided Bellator with proprietary documents outlining some of the UFC’s best business practices for the purpose of Bellator copying them.

In the Twitter fight, Pavia claimed he was the sport’s best agent – as well as its second best agent – and Kawa comes in third. Kawa, naturally, disputed that claim and urged Pavia to not start a fight he couldn’t finish.

Kawa said Pavia later tried to play the instance off as clowning around.

“He later sent an e-mail to a mutual friend of ours saying, ‘Hey, make sure to tell Malki to keep the beef going on Twitter,'” Kawa told Helwani. “To him it was a joke, to me it wasn’t. I was just like, ‘Ken Pavia, go eff yourself. I’ve got nothing to do with you.'”

Kawa, whose clients include UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, Strikeforce lightweight champ Gilbert Melendez, former WEC lightweight champ Ben Henderson and former title challengers Diego Sanchez and Thiago Alves, said what Pavia may have thought was a joke was no laughing matter to him. And he might just escalate it.

“I saw him at the fight this past Sunday, and i said, ‘Hey, what’s up bro?’ – and he didn’t say a word to me,” Kawa said. “So at the end of the day, I can tell that me and him are starting to have some personal problems.”

Kawa said his policy is to not get involved with other managers on a personal level, saying he respects a few of his competitors, but that there are a few he could not “care less about.”

“I’m a normal guy,” Kawa said. “I’m not the type of guy to say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna beef on Twitter, and then when I see you we’re gonna pretend like we’re cool.’ I don’t play those games. I don’t know what Ken Pavia’s problem is. Whatever they are, he can call me. He knows how to get to me – he already tried it on Twitter. It’s not a fight he wants to have, I don’t think. Not at this point.”

 

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Exclusive: Strikeforce Women’s Middleweight Champ Cris ‘Cyborg’ is Officially a Free Agent and Is Close to Coming to Terms With a New Promotion

Well, Cris “Cyborg” Santos is officially a free agent, which either means that Strikeforce was unwilling to pay her what she felt she was worth, or that Zuffa has decided against continuing to promote women’s MMA under the SF banner. Either way, it’s a blow to the promotion’s women’s division.

A source we spoke to today received confirmation from Cyborg’s management that Zuffa’s exclusive negotiation period with the 10-1 Curitiba, Brazil fighter ended yesterday and that the parent company of Strikeforce and the UFC failed to come to terms with the Strikeforce women’s middleweight champ before she became a free agent at the stroke of midnight.

Well, Cris “Cyborg” Santos is officially a free agent, which either means that Strikeforce was unwilling to pay her what she felt she was worth, or that Zuffa has decided against continuing to promote women’s MMA under the SF banner. Either way, it’s a blow to the promotion’s women’s division.

A source we spoke to today received confirmation from Cyborg’s management that Zuffa’s exclusive negotiation period with the 10-1 Curitiba, Brazil fighter ended yesterday and that the parent company of Strikeforce and the UFC failed to come to terms with the Strikeforce women’s middleweight champ before she became a free agent at the stroke of midnight.

According to Santos’ former manager Ken Pavia who helped negotiate the deal that was fulfilled with her last fight with Jan Finney on June 26, 2010, there was a champion’s clause in her contract, which he said he thought would extend her deal. But according to another we spoke to who is close to the situation,  the clause had a one-year expiration date and when Strikeforce failed to re-sign her or offer her a fight by June 26, they waived their right to exercise the option.

You may recall that former Strikeforce middleweight champion Jake Shields had a similar proviso in his contract, but when Scott Coker and co. figured there was little chance of resigning him, they granted him a release rather than make him sit out the one-year waiting period.

We’re told that Cris is in serious discussions with a promotion that we’ve been asked not to name until the deal is finalized and that she could have a new contract in place as early as this weekend. Wherever Gina Carano is, she’s thanking her lucky stars.

We will have updates the situation when we are given the go-ahead to release them by the parties involved.

 

Cage Potato Profile: Marquee MMA Agent Ken Pavia

(Photo courtesy CombatLifestyle.com)
Ken Pavia is a firm believer of the old adage, “Everything happens for a reason.”
When he inadvertently became an MMA agent six years ago, it was a result of the sport finding him and not the other way a…


(Photo courtesy CombatLifestyle.com)

Ken Pavia is a firm believer of the old adage, “Everything happens for a reason.”

When he inadvertently became an MMA agent six years ago, it was a result of the sport finding him and not the other way around, but looking back he says he’s thankful that it did.

Working as a traditional sports agent since graduating from the University of Miami School of Law and opening his first agency, Pavia says that he always had an eye for talent and would often put his skill to use outside of his practice, which caught the attention of an early MMA media pioneer.

“I had a men’s league softball team in Huntington Beach. I was acting as a pseudo-General Manager for the team and I had pretty much the best players from every team who competed on our team. There were probably 500 teams in the leagues and our team always made it to the ‘A’ league championships every year. The umpire for the league came to me and asked me how it was that I came to have all of the best players from all of the teams on my team and I told him I was a mainstream sports agent,” Pavia recalls. “He was told me, ‘I have a website that covers MMA.’ By coincidence, I was a fan and I bought UFC 1 and we chatted a bit about the sport and he told me to check out his website. That was [Sherdog.com founder] Jeff Sherwood. We struck up a friendship and have been great friends ever since. That was probably 10 years ago.”

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Exclusive: ‘Razor’ Rob McCullough Talks About Life, Family, His Fall From the Top and His Climb Back to the Big Leagues

(‘Razor’ is looking to get back to the top, no matter what it takes.)
Three years ago “Razor” Rob McCullough was on top of the world. The WEC champion was riding a nine-fight winning streak of which eight were finishes and there seemed to b…


(‘Razor’ is looking to get back to the top, no matter what it takes.)

Three years ago “Razor” Rob McCullough was on top of the world. The WEC champion was riding a nine-fight winning streak of which eight were finishes and there seemed to be no end to his run.

Then it happened.

In the third round of his second title defense, it seemed like McCullough was close to finishing Jamie Varner. Before he could go for the kill, Varner spit out his mouthgard and got a timeout to rinse it off, which allowed him to recover. Soon after, “The Worm” caught “Razor” with a handful of punches and won via TKO.

Four fights later McCullough was fired from the WEC without much explanation, in spite of the fact that he split them 2-2.

Since being unceremoniously dropped by the promotion, Razor Rob has gone 2-0 under the Tachi Palace Fights banner and most recently defeated UFC veteran Corey Hill last weekend by unanimous decision.

According to the former WEC lightweight champ, who is enjoying life sober, married and as a father of a six-month-old son, says he’s doing what he has to do to get back on the roster of a major organization, which he reveals is likely to happen soon and he says he’ll fight anyone who wants to fight him.

We caught up with Razor this week and spoke candidly and at length about a variety of topics including his childhood, his life, his family, his new goals as a fighter and the business of MMA.

I’ll warn you that the interview is very lengthy, but it’s worth the read if you have time as it reveals a personal, thoughtful and mature side of McCullough that fans rarely get a glimpse of in his pre-fight interviews.

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