ATLANTIC CITY, New Jersey, April 29 — It’s said that among team sports, baseball demands the greatest individual effort. Should Kurt Otto and Gareb Shamus get their way, mixed martial arts would soon own that distinction.
Judging by the reaction of the 20 athletes that came to the Trump Taj Mahal Saturday with a vision contrary to the one instilled in them from the time they first strapped on gloves, the concept, called gimmicky but cynics, might just catch on.
“As I stood out there and I watched these fights and I watched my team pick up steam, it helped give me a renewed vigor, a new energy,” said Rory Markham, a welterweight on Pat Miletich (Pictures)’s Silverbacks, one of four IFL teams that participated in tonight’s event.
“It gave me a level of confidence to see my team win and be there with my teammates,” he said.
Markham and his Silverback teammates, a group compiled mostly out of Miletich’s famed Iowa gym, were atypical when compared to the other teams in the IFL’s initial effort, which was taped for Fox Sports Net and will air on the regional sports network May 21.
Take Bas Rutten (Pictures)’s group, a hodgepodge out of Canada, Las Vegas and Southern California.
“I think the last four days everybody got a bond,” said Rutten, who joins Miletich, Renzo Gracie (Pictures) and Maurice Smith (Pictures) as IFL coaches. “I think if they have that bond like three weeks or two weeks in advance and if we all train together that’s a whole different story.”
In case anyone was curious, Miletich’s Silverbacks outgunned Rutten’s Anacondas four fights to one. The second match pitted Smith’s Tigersharks, which like Rutten’s group was a mix of unfamiliar fighters, versus Renzo Gracie (Pictures)’s Pitbulls.
As if scripted, the latter showdown came down to the final round of the final fight.
Devin Cole (Pictures) rebounded with a bit of motivation from his Tigershark cohorts to take the last four-minute stanza — one of several conflicts the IFL rule structure has with North America’s Unified Rules — and defeat Carlos Cline.
“It actually helped me suck it up more,” Cole said of gutting through a difficult second round. “Now you’re not only doing it for yourself. Now you’re doing it for your team.”
Inspired by the compelling documentary “The Smashing Machine,” which followed Mark Kerr as he battled through substance abuse problems during preparation for the first PRIDE Grand Prix, Otto says the genesis of the league came after he became “pissed off” at the idea that fighters were forced to deal with that sort of adversity.
So the successful architect called Shamus, a longtime friend and the man responsible for a slew of pop-culture bibles, and hashed out the idea for a system under which fighters, if it worked, would no longer have to fight paycheck to paycheck.
Considering the history of martial promotion, pretty lofty stuff.
“The true meaning of entrepreneur is ‘to create something that never existed.’ And that’s what they’re doing,” said a skinny Kerr, no longer resembling the monster captured on film.
“I think every fighter in some facet has thought about something like this, just not knowing how to get it done,” he said.
What, exactly, “this” is we can’t be sure. If history is an indication — and it tends to be — money is the reason anything happens in this cutthroat world.
Clearly, the IFL has spent plenty, what with court cases featuring high-priced New York and Las Vegas counsel. But Zuffa’s hazing won’t be the determining factor on whether this concept is feasible in the long term.
Rather, how much Otto and Shamus are willing to lose is a far more interesting topic. There was talk in Atlantic City that the IFL would eventually go public. At the post-fight presser Shamus announced that Coca-Cola had signed on as a sponsor.
These are things that, even now, few would have thought possible for a North American MMA entity. But it’s hardly all roses for the first-time fight promoters — and that’s what they are regardless if they chose to call themselves that or not.
Tonight’s 11-bout card, which also featured a non-team fight that saw Jens Pulver (Pictures) knockout Cole Escovedo (Pictures) in under a minute, drew a paltry crowd. Whatever the tally was (the IFL said it was roughly 3,000 but it didn’t look that crowded), the building was heavily papered to get there.
Competing against a Realty Fighting card that catered to locals didn’t help. Neither did the IFL’s dismissive attitude when it came to the live gate.
A few more like this might dissipate whatever good will Shamus has built among investors familiar with him through other ventures. To be fair, tonight’s card was a television pilot. Having signed with FSN sight unseen, the card, produced by Emmy-award winner Peter Lasser, offered IFL a chance to work out the kinks, put fights on Memorex, and compile B Roll.
That it did.
Only time will tell if anything else materializes from Saturday evening.