(Now that I think about it, Rich always was something of a forward thinker when it came to MMA.)
If Rich Franklin is “a loser” by his own admission, I’d sure like to know who he considers a winner (besides Anderson Silva, obviously). The former middleweight champion has been killing it outside of the octagon lately, opening his own successful, high-end juice business and now, accepting a role as the Vice President of burgeoning Asian MMA promotion, One FC. Not bad for a guy who once *insert hackneyed Ace Ventura reference here*
While rumors of Franklin’s potential gig started floating around more than a month ago, it wasn’t until this morning that Cheryl Tay of Yahoo Sports broke the official news. ONE FC chief executive officer Victor Cui was more than elated when discussing the role of his promotion’s latest acquirement:
Rich Franklin is another perfect example – he is an icon in this industry. Everybody loves him, he is well-respected, and he will a fantastic addition to the team in terms of experience and helping the sport grow in Asia from ground up awareness.
We will continue to define his role but to me now what’s most important is finding the best people. I am aggressively hiring in all positions and looking to add another 200 staff in the near future as we grow. At the moment, we are a young company still and Rich will do a lot of different things for us, from talent management to fighter recruitment and giving seminars.
Franklin was similarly excited by the prospect of working for Asia’s fastest-developing MMA promotion, telling Yahoo that “MMA in Asia right now is at the tip of the iceberg.”
“If you were to rewind the clock,” said Franklin, “it’s like MMA in the States back in 2003. I think MMA is going to take off like wildfire here in Asia and I will be part of it.”
(Now that I think about it, Rich always was something of a forward thinker when it came to MMA.)
If Rich Franklin is “a loser” by his own admission, I’d sure like to know who he considers a winner (besides Anderson Silva, obviously). The former middleweight champion has been killing it outside of the octagon lately, opening his own successful, high-end juice business and now, accepting a role as the Vice President of burgeoning Asian MMA promotion, One FC. Not bad for a guy who once *insert hackneyed Ace Ventura reference here*
While rumors of Franklin’s potential gig started floating around more than a month ago, it wasn’t until this morning that Cheryl Tay of Yahoo Sports broke the official news. ONE FC chief executive officer Victor Cui was more than elated when discussing the role of his promotion’s latest acquirement:
Rich Franklin is another perfect example – he is an icon in this industry. Everybody loves him, he is well-respected, and he will a fantastic addition to the team in terms of experience and helping the sport grow in Asia from ground up awareness.
We will continue to define his role but to me now what’s most important is finding the best people. I am aggressively hiring in all positions and looking to add another 200 staff in the near future as we grow. At the moment, we are a young company still and Rich will do a lot of different things for us, from talent management to fighter recruitment and giving seminars.
Franklin was similarly excited by the prospect of working for Asia’s fastest-developing MMA promotion, telling Yahoo that “MMA in Asia right now is at the tip of the iceberg.”
“If you were to rewind the clock,” said Franklin, “it’s like MMA in the States back in 2003. I think MMA is going to take off like wildfire here in Asia and I will be part of it.”
Franklin made sure to confirm that, despite not having fought in over two years, there will be nothing in his ONE FC deal preventing him from fulfilling his UFC contract with a final fight, whenever that may be.
I went to speak to Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta of the UFC at the end of last year, to tell them that ONE FC was offering me a job. They told me it sounds like a really good offer and they were completely supportive, unlike what others might have thought.
According to the UFC, taking a position in ONE FC does not force me into retiring from fighting. It is my intention to fight my last fight and it will be my retirement fight. But I have to sit down and discuss this with everybody (at ONE FC) as well. Will it be at 185 or 205 pounds? It doesn’t matter as long as the opponent they pick makes sense to me. It must be something exciting for the fans to see.
Although “Ace” will remain stateside while carrying out most of his duties for ONE FC, he will be in Singapore all week to promote/attend ONE FC: Honor & Glory. Let’s hope he’s able to avoid another restroom mishap like the last time he was around fancy company.
URCC (Philippines), Cage Fighting Championship (Australia), ROAD Fighting Championship (Korea), DARE Championship (Thailand), Team Lakay Wushu (Philippines), Tiger Muay Thai and MMA (Thailand), Tigers Gym (India), Evolve Mixed Martial Arts (Singapore), Legacy Gym (Thailand), Tough MMA (Taiwan), Synergy Jiu-Jitsu (Indonesia), Juggernaut FC (Singapore), Fightworks Asia (Singapore), PAK MMA (Pakistan), Team Force (Korea), MuayFit (Malaysia), Leverage MMA (Malaysia)
Aside from this list, CEO/Owner Victor Cui announced that they would be adding 23 more gyms and promotions to their network in the following weeks in an effort to “unify Asian MMA and to build the sport that we all love dearly.” Cui continued:
URCC (Philippines), Cage Fighting Championship (Australia), ROAD Fighting Championship (Korea), DARE Championship (Thailand), Team Lakay Wushu (Philippines), Tiger Muay Thai and MMA (Thailand), Tigers Gym (India), Evolve Mixed Martial Arts (Singapore), Legacy Gym (Thailand), Tough MMA (Taiwan), Synergy Jiu-Jitsu (Indonesia), Juggernaut FC (Singapore), Fightworks Asia (Singapore), PAK MMA (Pakistan), Team Force (Korea), MuayFit (Malaysia), Leverage MMA (Malaysia)
Aside from this list, CEO/Owner Victor Cui announced that they would be adding 23 more gyms and promotions to their network in the following weeks in an effort to “unify Asian MMA and to build the sport that we all love dearly.” Cui continued:
With today’s announcement, many of the top MMA organizations and gyms in Asia have joined hands. These strong partnerships will help to accelerate the development of Asian fighters and the sport of MMA in the region. Asian fighters need platforms to gain invaluable experience and to showcase their skills to the world.
Damn, playa. DW would be proud.
Since the fallout of Pride, there is little denying that the opportunities for Asian mixed martial artists have shrank considerably. Under this new deal, any fighter signed under One FC will be able to compete under 5 different smaller banners (Cage Fighting Championships, Road FC, URCC and Dare Championships) for the opportunity to be called up to OneFC based on their performances, in turn allowing One FC to promote upwards of 30 events in 2012.
And, proving the theory that people on that side of the world simply work more efficiently than us, One FC has already announced three events to transpire across three countries in 2012. Though no fights have been announced, the first event will take place on February 11th in Kelapa Gading Sports Mall in Jakarta, Indonesia. The second, at the 12,000 capacity Singapore Indoor Stadium on March 31st. The third, will be the first ever major MMA event held in Malaysia, and will go down at the Stadium Negara in Kuala Lumpur on April 27th.
With the DREAM promotion currently hovering between “sporadic” and “possibly going under”, it is great to see that there is hope for the face of Asian MMA, and with a CEO as ambitious as Cui, it seems the sky is the limit for One FC.
Filed under: MMA Fighting Exclusive, News, interview, JapanSince Pride shut its doors in 2007, the MMA world has been dominated by American promotions. With leading Japanese promotion DREAM struggling to stay afloat, the focus of the MMA world has shif…
Since Pride shut its doors in 2007, the MMA world has been dominated by American promotions. With leading Japanese promotion DREAM struggling to stay afloat, the focus of the MMA world has shifted to the West and Asia, the world’s most populated continent and the birthplace of martial arts.
After spending the last 15 years organizing events such as the X-Games, the Olympics, PGA Tour and World Cup Indoor Soccer, Cui now shifts his focus to MMA and with ONE FC aims to create,”the king of MMA in Asia.”
With the PGA Tour, Canadian Golf Open, LPGA Canadian Women’s Open, 2000 Olympics and the X-Games on his lengthy resume, Victor Cui is no newcomer to promotion – and that resume includes MMA.
While working at ESPN Star Sports in 2010, Cui put together the Martial Combat series to gauge interest for MMA in Asia. Although Martial Combat pilot was much smaller in scale than the forthcoming ONE FC, it was still ambitious as Cui promoted 12 events in six months with two shows on consecutive nights every month.
Promoting Martial Combat proved to be a valuable experience as the pilot promotion allowed the ONE FC staff to become acquainted with the MMA business in a very short time. The incredible schedule ensured that a tight ship was being run and it also enabled Cui to convince “some high-powered friends with deep pockets” to support ONE FC.
“The small test pilot project (Martial Combat) that I did while working for ESPN StarSports last year, it was exactly that – a small test pilot project to test the waters and to gauge interest levels for MMA in Asia,” says Cui. “It was a small experiment held in a hotel ballroom whereas ONE Fighting Championship is the real deal. ONE Fighting Championship is the Asian major leagues.”
The first ONE FC event is set to take place at the 12,000-seat Singapore Indoor Stadium on Sept. 3. Cageside and VIP tickets sold out in hours and demand was so high that the ticketing service server reportedly crashed. The event will be broadcast on network TV in Singapore, shown in 500 million homes in Asia on ESPN StarSports and will be streamed free online to the rest of the world.
An MMA event of this scale has never been held in Singapore before, but a look through the inaugural card for such a highly hyped event is somewhat confusing as only a handful of fighters on the card have any significant MMA experience. Names such as Yodsanan Sityodtong, Vuyisile Colossa and Ma Xing Yu are unknown to many Western fans, but that is not the case for Asian audiences.
“Fans want to see the best of the best compete against one another. For that very reason, ONE Fighting Championship has signed practically every Asian world champion or national champion in martial arts to compete under MMA rules. Most of our fighters are already household names in Asia.”
As Cui implies, a significant number of these household names and champions are not actually famous due to their MMA accomplishments. Many draw from the locally established sports of Muay Thai, karate, boxing, sanda and wushu or are from Brazilian jiu-jitsu. In many ways it feels like a throwback to the early 90’s era of style versus style. But getting these big names from other combat sports is part of the plan to appeal to mainstream fans in developing markets.
“Take a guy like Yodsanan Sityodtong,” says Cui. “WBA boxing world champion with a 58-3 record with 48 KOs…he’s a national hero in Thailand…he’s been a national hero for the last 10 years. The guy gets mobbed by fans in Thailand. Our entire roster is made up of heroes like him, but for each Asian country.”
History has shown that hedging your bets on stars from other fight sports is risky and for ONE FC to compete in the modern MMA world, they will need a more stable source of athletes.
“For MMA to succeed in Asia, you essentially need an MMA ecosystem,” explains Cui. “MMA gyms, MMA promotions, MMA sponsors, media broadcasters, etc. Historically, Japan was the only place in Asia that had an MMA ecosystem. And sadly, MMA in Japan has always had historical ties to the mafia. Well, times have changed.”
Although Japanese MMA has been on the decline since the demise of Pride, until now Japan has still undoubtedly had the best gyms in Asia. That has the potential to change though with camps like Singapore’s Evolve MMA leading the way. The 12,000-square foot Evolve MMA has facilities and a coaching staff that are unheard of in Japan. DREAM lightweight champion Shinya Aoki recently signing on with the gym is a testament to the potential shift in Asia.
“The Asian MMA ecosystem is exploding everywhere in Asia, especially high quality MMA gyms and quality promotions,” Cui explains. “And with our capital, our media reach, our sponsors, our Asian world champions, etc., ONE Fighting Championship is happy to lead the way for the creation of a legitimate and thriving Asian MMA ecosystem. There are MMA gyms in every country in Asia right now and the numbers are growing rapidly. Of course, it is not like the US yet, but there is definitely an ecosystem developing.”
As Cui acknowledges, a few high quality gyms and a solid promotion to support them is only the beginning of the growth of the sport in Asia. Looking at how the American market blew up though, Cui sees the potential.
“MMA has skyrocketed with 30x growth in the last 10 years and it’s barely scratched the surface of its potential, especially for Asia,” says Cui. “For example, less than 1 percent of the 3.9 billion people in Asia have heard of or watched MMA. And yet, everyone here in Asia practices or knows about martial arts. Asia has been the home of martial arts for the last 5,000 years. Muay Thai in Thailand, Silat in Indonesia, Kung Fu in China, Karate in Japan, etc. And I believe that MMA has a real chance of becoming the largest sport in the world … yes, even bigger than soccer.”
For MMA, or ONE FC, to have a shot at becoming bigger than soccer, Cui will first need to find a way to introduce the sport to the 48 countries of wildly different economic status and culture that make up Asia. The marketing plan starts in Singapore and it is, in a word: aggressive.
“We have to market very aggressively since we are essentially introducing the sport to a mainstream audience for the first time,” Cui says. “For example, for our inaugural show, we have TV commercials through our broadcast partners. Actually we have tied up with the major movie theaters here in Singapore to show our TV commercials during the previews, we have tie-ins with the movie Killer Elite with Robert de Niro and Jason Statham. We have full body-wrap ads on taxis, on subways, we have TV commercials playing on large outdoor TV screens on Orchard Road (the main shopping district in Singapore). We have ads in magazines, newspapers, etc. We have partnered with all the major associations, we have online ads … in a nutshell, the marketing program is a 360-degree effort to blanket the entire Singapore.”
For such a wide-reaching marketing campaign, ONE FC needs strong backers. Given Cui’s corporate history, he has been able to bring some major names on board.
“I prefer to let my actions speak for themselves. You can read between the lines though … the fact that ESPN StarSports and MediaCorp and a few other broadcasters jumped on board without a single event … or our sponsors like Energizer, Schick, Holiday Inn, etc. They all came on board without any product to show them,” says Cui. “Well, put it this way, they have all seen our plans and know how much capital we are investing … you guys will just have to wait and see. All I can say is that we are the real deal and it’s a first for Asia. ONE Fighting Championship marks the first time in Asian MMA history that a legitimate sports media industry veteran has led an MMA organization. It’s never happened before and so the access to capital, media, sponsors, etc. is unprecedented.”
ONE Fighting Championship, by any measure, is an extremely ambitious undertaking. For Cui though, the biggest challenge will be simply be the fights themselves.
“The biggest challenge is always to put on exciting fights that fans want to see. If we can put on explosive and entertaining fights between the best martial artists in Asia, then everything else will fall into place. Asians understand martial arts – we’ve been doing it for the last 5,000 years.”
Since Pride shut its doors in 2007, the