Sunday, January 21, 2007

Another Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) called Elite Xtreme Championships?

UFC fans, are you familiar with the EliteXtreme Championship that will be making it's first appearance on Showtime, February 10th? None of my personal co-UFC fans are familiar with it, at least not until I asked. Most of them looked at me like, what? Huh? Never heard of it, type of responses.

One evening a couple weeks ago, my father turned on a boxing match via the satelite TV, it was a Showtime fight. The recapitulating commercial trailer talking about the February 10th event, I could not help but to notice. So, who is behind this Elite XC, I thought and started inquiring?

As I Google searched, the following names started lining up: Gary Shaw, Douglas DeLuca, Kelly Perdew, Frank Shamrock, and Renzo Gracie. Click on each of there names to view the detailing websites. The first three people bring an interesting mix to Elite XC on paper, it appears to be an unstoppable dream team based upon the resumes. What do you think?

With the dream team, you have Gary Shaw, a well known former regulator of the boxing industry turned boxing promoter. Douglas Deluca, a successful producer of many events, television shows, and the movie industry. Than of course, there is the Donald Trump season two "The Apprentice" show winner, Kelly Perdew that was the former President of eteamz.com (the largest amateur sports portal in the world)' is the President of EliteXC.com We could speculate the outcome of there creativity and leadership but it will all come down to results, right?

Frank Shamrock and Renzo Gracie are the main cards to the event. Elite XC seems to be offering MMA without utilizing Pay Per View (PPV) strategies to generate income, at least for now, they intend to be more accessible to the Dojo's, and the millions of MMA fans around the world, making the under card fights available via live webcasting. Sounds interesting, what do you think?

It's ashamed that there could not be just one main MMA organization where fighters from around the world would fight. This would in my opinion eliminate the questions, what organizations have the best line up of fighters. In addition, it eliminates questions like, so and so might be the champ with this organization but he would not be able to beat the champ in such and such organization. Unlesss......

Can you imagine that? Perhaps there will be a PRIDE fighters verses UFC fighters or UFC fighters verses Elite XC and so on. Will the dream team of Elite XC make it work and compete with PRIDE and UFC? Or perhaps with Elite XC it will help keep things even more competitive in the MMA fight industry?

What are other bloggers saying about it? "Elite XC Live Events President Gary Shaw announced yesterday at a news conference that the promotion has signed former UFC welterweight contender Nick Diaz. Diaz’s manager and BJJ coach Cesar Gracie confirmed the signing yesterday and said that Diaz should be making his Elite XC debut sometime in May." posted by John Chandler.

There will be probably other UFC fighters following trend with the Elite XC. Here's what another blogger said, "In a paper-thin UFC heavyweight division, Brandon Vera (8-0 MMA, 4-0 UFC) has been a rare star in the making. With Jeff Monson’s loss to current heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia (23-2 MMA, 8-2 UFC) at UFC 65, Vera seemed the next logical choice for a shot at the title. However, according to a recent Los Angeles Times story, Vera may be considering a move to a rival upstart MMA organization." Posted by UFC Junkie

After reviewing a number of related blogs on the net, it appears that Elite XC has a clear angle to acquiring other UFC fighters based upon perhaps the Elite XC fighter contracts are more attractive than what some UFC fighters have or something. Obviously, it is not about loyalty to the UFC, but rather business maybe. What do you think? Many more MMA bloggers will join the discussion with some insight into the case of the new Elite XC, I am certain.

I can imagine the hundreds of thousands of MMA fans emailing, instant messaging, text messaging, cellphoning, and more as the event occurs February 10th on Showtime sharing with others what's happening and telling them to check it out on Showtime and online via live webstreams of the undercard fights. Not sure if they will show the main card, probably not, huh huh! Tell me what you think about all of this? --- Pall Stanley