Tag: WSOF

The World Series of Fighting is making big moves that could forever shift the balance of power in MMA.

WSOF President Ray Sefo announced a few weeks ago that the WSOF would be entering the pay-per-view market in 2015 after just two years in existence.

But the real kicker was the announcement that the promotion would split 50 percent of the revenue with the fighters competing on future cards. The proposal of the new model generated plenty of buzz and left more questions than answers.

In an exclusive interview with Bleacher Report, Sefo opened up about his company’s reasoning behind the revenue split:

We did it because, me being a fighter, we understand that fighters deserve what they deserve, and that’s the bottom line. For example, a lot of my brothers and a lot of my family members are huge fans of the combat world. Some of them have trained a little bit here or there, and some of my other brothers have fought and became world champions. The ones that never fought at the highest level don’t understand the commitment, the sacrifice that it takes to be a world champion, to get to that highest level of the game.

All they really care about is: Are they going to show up? Are they going to see a great fight? They don’t really take into consideration what the guy had to go through in dieting, leaving his family and going away to camp, not being able to go out with his friends, not being able to eat or drink whatever they want. All of these kinds of things come into play. … All of these fighters deserve as much as the company can provide for them.

Sefo believes his experience as a kickboxer, boxer and professional MMA fighter gives him an edge in dealing with fighters. He isn’t preaching about things that he hasn’t already done. Years of blood, sweat and tears shed have propelled him to put some of the bargaining power back into the hands of the fighters.

A discrepancy in fighter pay has been a constantly debated issue in professional MMA. The common presumption is that fighters in large promotions, particularly the UFC, are making money along the same lines of professional athletes from other sports.

The UFC is widely considered the mecca of MMA, and several fighters, both past and present, have complained about being undercompensated by the promotion.

In a YouTube video, MMA legend and former UFC middleweight Wanderlei Silva announced his retirement from the sport, pointing to fighter pay and the UFC’s treatment of fighters as his sole reason for ending his 18-year run.

During an appearance on Submission Radio, former UFC light heavyweight champ Tito Ortiz claimed that fighters in the UFC are rewarded with only “6 percent of the revenue that is collected from fans.”

UFC heavyweight contender Mark Hunt recently sent out a disgruntled tweet regarding his pay as a UFC fighter.

Of course, there are fighters who have defended the UFC’s payouts, including flyweight contender Ian McCall in a post on the MMA Underground (h/t BloodyElbow.com).

The UFC is often brought up in these conversations because it is generally seen as the blueprint of success other promotions hope to one day achieve. Backed by NBC and IMG, the WSOF refuses to play follow the leader.

Sefo acknowledged that UFC President Dana White is great at what he does, but he was also willing to concede that “there’s no smoke without fire.” If a fighter isn’t happy, there is obviously a reason, especially if the same chirping is coming from several birdies.

However, Sefo admitted that his unfamiliarity with the operations of other promotions prohibits him from speaking on their behalf.

If successful, the idea of a revenue split is a very intriguing proposal that could tip the bargaining power in favor of the fighters. The WSOF is a growing promotion that has already acquired the likes of former UFC stars Jake Shields, Jon Fitch, Rousimar Palhares, Yushin Okami and Melvin Guillard.

It also has a growing stable of world-class talent that may go unrecognized by casual fans, including fighters like Jessica Aguilar, Rick Glenn, Justin Gaethje, Marlon Moraes and Nick Newell.

The mere possibility of receiving 50 percent of the pay-per-view revenue from a major promotion like the WSOF could be enough to draw interest from young prospects and disgruntled veterans from other promotions.

But all of this goes without mentioning the cutthroat nature of the pay-per-view business. It isn’t easy to accomplish the things that the UFC has accomplished. The WSOF is undoubtedly on the upswing, but it still remains to be seen whether it can put together a strong enough show capable of enticing couch fans to open their wallets.

After coming this far in such a short time, Sefo is completely confident in his team’s ability to get the job done.

“Obviously for us, it’s the continuance of moving forward and getting better and better every time and every show,” said Sefo. “The ultimate goal is that if you have a TV, we want to be on your television.”

WSOF 14 airs live on NBCSN on Saturday night.

The headliner features a title fight between Canadian WSOF welterweight champ Ryan Ford and Jake Shields, a former Strikeforce champ and UFC contender. An inaugural heavyweight champ will also be crowned in the co-main event when Smealinho Rama meets Derrick Mehmen.

Despite Saturday’s important fight card, people are already talking about the date switch for WSOF 15, which was moved from October 24 to November 15. Coincidentally, Cain Velasquez is slated to defend his heavyweight title against Fabricio Werdum at UFC 180 on that night. The highly anticipated grudge match between Tito Ortiz and Stephan Bonnar is scheduled to serve as the main event for Bellator 131 that night as well.

November 15 will now be a triple-header featuring the world’s best promotions. Some have already jumped the gun in assuming the WSOF purposely chose this date to contend with the UFC and Bellator, but according to Sefo, this is far from the reality of the situation.

Given the UFC’s increased number of events, the WSOF president knew it was only a matter of time before multiple shows occurred on the same night.

“We already had our schedule for 2013, so we get a schedule from NBC four months, five months out, before the end of the year,” Sefo explained. “Unfortunately with the UFC, they have a show every week and sometimes two shows a night. At some point, we are all going to have a show, like for example November 15.”

Despite his ongoing duties as WSOF president, Sefo is also considering returning to competition in either MMA or kickboxing a couple of more times. There was a kickboxing match setup for October, but plans fell through and the bout was canceled.

Sefo said fans can look forward to him stepping back into the ring in 2015, possibly as early as February.

All quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Jordy McElroy is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA writer for Rocktagon.

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The World Series of Fighting is entering the pay-per-view business in 2015 with a plan that could, according to officials, “forever change the earning potential” for MMA fighters, per MMAJunkie.com.

WSOF officials announced on Tuesday that the promotion would be adopting a revenue-sharing model as a means for compensating fighters featured on pay-per-view telecasts.

Per the report, fighters will be receiving 50 percent of all net revenue brought in by an event.

Fighter pay is a frequently debated topic in combat sports, as many expect some of their favorite fighters to be paid along similar lines of professional athletes in other sports. Unfortunately, there is a huge gray area between what’s fair and unfair in the fight business.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship has been in the pay-per-view business longer than any other MMA promotion on the planet, and UFC fighters have often complained about being undercompensated.

MMA legend Wanderlei Silva accused the UFC of underpaying fighters and taking away his desire to compete in a recent YouTube video. Longtime MMA trainer Cesar Gracie backed Silva’s message in a Twitter post, citing that fans aren’t paying to watch “greedy promoters”:

WSOF president Ray Sefo, a former fighter, believes this new module could be the domino that finally tips the negotiation process in favor of the fighters, per MMA Junkie:

Until now one of the main things holding this sport back from becoming even bigger than it is today has been fighter compensation and the inability of the sport’s top athletes to earn on par with top-level professional athletes in other sports.

The net revenue attained by the WSOF will heavily depend on the pay-per-view card lineup and the ability of the fighters to promote the event. Unfortunately, Conor McGregors don’t grow on trees.

The WSOF already has a growing stable of talent, including Jon Fitch, Rousimar Palhares, Yushin Okami, Jessica Aguilar, Melvin Guillard, Justin Gaethje, Nick Newell, Rick Glenn and many others.

But with half of its revenue going straight to the fighters, it still remains to be seen if the promotion has the star power to actually turn a profit with this new module.

Jordy McElroy is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA writer for Rocktagon.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Pushing through long odds has to get old. It’s a great story for everyone else, but for the person actually doing it, the struggle to succeed in a driving headwind is not a feel-good narrative. It’s decidedly feel-bad, actually. 

But if you can get up on top of that headwind for even a second, well, that’s got to be pretty doggone sweet.

The most tumultuous stretch of Rick Glenn’s career—maybe his entire life—began late last fall when, barely a month away from the date, he announced he would not take part in a December featherweight title fight with champion Georgi Karakhanyan at World Series of Fighting 7.

Glenn (15-2) had never backed out of a fight and for the most part had avoided significant injuries. Since 2010, the 25-year-old had never fought less than twice in a single year and had twice competed four times before the calendar flipped. Given that a belt was on the line, it seemed the stoic Glenn would have limped to the cage with one foot in a bear trap if need be.

So why the withdrawal? Personal reasons, WSOF officials said. For almost a year, Glenn and everyone else left it at that. But as with many “personal situations,” the story went pretty deep. As it turns out, Glenn himself was fine. Life was not.

“My sister has brain cancer,” Glenn revealed in an exclusive interview with Bleacher Report. “She’s been fighting it for a year now, and she’s way past what they expected. She’s really sick. I was Back in Iowa, and I just wanted to spend as much time with her as I could.”

Not long before Glenn learned the news about his sister, another tragedy befell the family: Glenn’s grandmother had passed away. It was a particularly crippling blow for Glenn, whose grandmother had raised Rick and his siblings essentially single-handedly in little Marshalltown, Iowa, a place known as much for its meth labs as its farming community.

“I don’t talk to my dad, and my mom lives out of town,” Glenn says, and leaves it at that. “Our grandmother was a parent for us. She raised us.”

Through the fall, winter and much of the spring, WSOF was mum on Glenn’s status. Speculation grew over what exactly was keeping the promising fighter away. Finally, the promotion announced that Glenn would indeed come back to the cage and would face Karakhanyan for the title in June.

After eight months out, Glenn finally had his chance, though when he stepped into the cage in June at WSOF 10, he was a substantial underdog.

The beginning of the fight upheld oddsmaker suspicions. At the time, Karakhanyan was the top featherweight prospect in the sport, and the linchpin of that assessment was the Armenian’s seek-and-destroy mat game. Ten seconds into the contest, Glenn was on his back and in survival mode. He wriggled out of a rear-naked choke attempt, then found himself under full mount.

At the round’s halfway point, Karakhanyan latched onto Glenn’s wrist and extended for an armbar. And it was a very tight armbar, the kind that makes you recoil from the screen. Blood vessels, tendons and ligaments came into sharp relief as Glenn’s arm torqued backward and sideways at the elbow, twitching under the hold like an eel on the hook. A submission looked imminent.

“I wasn’t calm at first,” Glenn recalled. “I thought, ‘Oh, s–t.’ I just tried to think ‘Don’t tap.’ I didn’t want to lose like that. I kept kind of turning my hand around in it. I thought [my elbow] was going to pop.”

After 20 solid seconds of cranking, Glenn’s right leg whipped up almost out of nowhere and draped itself over Karakhanyan’s body. As if with a mind of its own, the right foot sought and gained purchase on the far side of Karakhanyan’s neck and pushed off, forcing Karakhanyan to relinquish the hold. The audience, still assuming the cobra would snare the mongoose eventually, clapped politely.

They weren’t expecting that escape to be the fulcrum on which the entire fight shifted. As the first round wound to a close, Glenn used his fists to chip away at Karakhanyan, who was seemingly a bit shell-shocked at the armbar escape.

As the second kicked off, Karakhanyan’s ground advantage evaporated. Glenn reversed takedowns and worked himself into top position. That’s when the ground-and-pound began in earnest. Soon enough, Glenn was slamming the point of his knee hard into a turtled-up Karakhanyan’s rib cage.

That grappling prowess came as a surprise to fans who thought of Glenn, who trains alongside Anthony Pettis and other standup wizards at Milwaukee’s Roufusport gym, as a striker first.

“My grappling is actually better than my striking,” Glenn deadpans. “I just like to strike more. I like to be exciting.”

Glenn’s abilities might also have come as a surprise to Karakhanyan himself. During the rest period between the second and third rounds, a doctor stopped the contest when Karakhanyan said he couldn’t adequately breathe. Freshly cracked ribs were the culprit. Suddenly the fight was over.

But in a way, the doctor’s stoppage was fitting for Glenn. It happened so quickly, so quietly, so anticlimactically, you weren’t even sure what was happening or who was behind it. But no matter the hows and whys, Rick Glenn was the new WSOF featherweight champ.

So proud of all my team @ufc @WECNeverForget Champ @Showtimepettis @BellatorMMA Champ @Benaskren @MMAWorldSeries Champ @Gladiatorglenn

— Duke Roufus (@dukeroufus) June 22, 2014

“I was like ‘Heck yeah,’” Glenn recalled feeling as his hand went up. “I had proven people wrong.”

But it couldn’t be that easy. Several weeks later, Karakhanyan said he didn’t think Glenn “was that good” and wondered aloud why Glenn couldn’t finish him despite the rib injury.

Asked about those comments, Glenn first attempts to shrug them off. But you can hear the irritation and even a bit of hurt grow in his voice as he examines and re-examines the words in his head.

“I really didn’t react to it. I’m not gonna play into that crap,” Glenn said before pausing. “I actually respected that guy before. I was confused by what he said. It definitely takes away from my victory.”

Glenn pauses again, thinks about it some more.

“He quit,” Glenn continued. “As soon as the doctor asked him, he said he couldn’t breathe. That’s quitting. So, yeah. He quit. …He’s a punk.”

Does Glenn want a rematch with Karakhanyan? You can tell the thought is tempting. At the same time, Glenn realizes that calling for a rematch is exactly what Karakhanyan wants. So instead, Glenn suggests the Armenian “win a few more fights” before re-entering the title picture.

That allows the new champ to turn his focus to a new challenge: four-time All-American wrestler Lance Palmer. Nothing is official yet, but Glenn did indicate that Palmer was “most likely” his next opponent.

“Lance Palmer deserves it,” Glenn said.

If bystanders are thinking of underestimating his ground game again, they might want to reassess that strategy. After all, this is a guy who trains with Ben Askren, just outgrappled Georgi Karakhanyan and recently completed 300 rounds of jiu-jitsu training in one month on top of his regular training. You know, just for giggles.

“One of our coaches gave us a challenge, to do 150 rounds in a month,” Glenn said. “I blew right past that and decided to do 300, in honor of the Spartans.”

That’s the movie 300, of course, the one where a bunch of cartoonish warriors take up spear and arrow against the insurmountable odds bearing down on them. Things are less cut-and-dried in the real world, where ideas like clean, storybook endings are elusive and things like brain cancer exist.

“She’s hanging in there,” Glenn said of his sister. “Every day is a challenge. But she’s a fighter…I think it does run in the family. For sure.”

Scott Harris writes about MMA for Bleacher Report. Follow Scott on Twitter if you feel so inclined.

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