Q&A with Oktagon MMA Co-Founder Pavol Neruda Ahead of Oktagon 62

👑 ‘The King of Germany’ 👑

What do you think of our new belt that will be awarded to the OKTAGON 62 main event winner tomorrow night?

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Will Christian Eckerlin 🇩🇪 or Christian Jungwirth 🇩🇪 leave Deutsche Bank Park as the champion?

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— OKTAGON MMA (@OktagonOfficial) October 11, 2024

Oktagon MMA is on the move.

While racing through the airport to board to his flight to Frankfurt, Germany, Oktagon MMA co-founder and promoter Pavol Neruda couldn’t hide his anticipation ahead of Saturday’s historic card. Set to surpass the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s highest-attended event, Okatgon 62: Eckerlin vs. Jungwirth from the Deutsche Bank Park has sold 58,000 tickets and aims to deliver a night the European MMA scene will never forget.

German fan favorites Christian Eckerlin and Christian Jungwirth will battle it out in the main event, and the card includes two title fights for the middleweight and women’s strawweight crowns. The show is set to include a halftime performance from world-renowned British recording artist John Newman and will debut the promotion’s new anthem. Neruda has been beaming with energy over what’s set to be the biggest card in the promotion’s eight-year history.

“We have such a big passion for the sport, and we love it,” Neruda told Sherdog.com. “We love the fans and we love the moment. We want our fighters to feel like heroes and experience the feeling of a crazy crowd and the feeling of fame. We’re able to deliver this because our team has this passion for the sport.”

Starting in June 2016 as a reality TV show called the Oktagon Challenge, Neruda and co-founder Ondrej Novotny dreamed of a promotion to revolutionize European MMA. Eight years later, that vision becomes clearer by the day. Neruda sat down with Shedog.com to discuss Oktagon MMA’s rise through the world of combat sports.

Oktagon 62 is set to break the record for largest [European] attendance at an MMA event. What does that record mean to you and what does it mean for the promotion moving forward?
Neruda: There’s so much space to grow in our sport, so we are so passionate about pushing the boundaries. Like, let’s be honest, MMA is big, but it’s still so far behind football and the other major sports but we believe there should be big stars and big money in the sport. There’s even bigger stadiums out there. We want to be the European Champions League of combat sports. The same way people watch from all over no matter who’s playing, that’s what we’re striving for. But to reach a world record is mind-blowing.

As a promoter, how do you approach developing a card in the beginning stages, and what aspects of the card to you value the most?
Neruda: The city and arena are very important. You want an arena that’s proper to your needs, with at least 10,000 and 20,000 seats, depending on the area. Of course, it’s about the actual fight card. Some matchmakers try to make a fight where the hero will always win. But we don’t do this. The fans are not stupid, and they can feel the tension of an even match. Even though if the “hero” wins and it’ll be good for our future strategy, we’ll never do this. We want a proper fight and if they deserve the win they’ll earn it because that’s great storytelling too.

Oktagon MMA is known for bringing an intense atmosphere to its fights. How have you built such a loyal and rowdy fanbase?
Neruda: Without the fans, we’re nobody. We can’t do anything without the fans and they’re everything to us. It takes years to build trust and love from people, but one stupid decision can ruin it in a minute. That’s why we always trust that we are honest and do what’s best for the fans, even when it's hard. Fighters can sometimes be hard to deal with and fans don’t always see the inside of negotiations, but we never try to cheat the fans. Even when Ondrej and I are cageside, we want to be surprised. We want to wonder who will win and be entertained.

When the world came to a halt in 2020, Oktagon MMA was still one of the most active promotions in MMA. How did you push through the adversity?
Neruda: We had just pulled off the biggest event ever in Czechoslovakia and it was crazy because it was like a [Conor] McGregor fight in our small world. So we think we’re about to build on this success and then COVID hit. It took me and Ondrej basically hours before we called each other and discussed ‘what now?’ In 24 hours, we had a new concept. We were going to do this underground, let’s go to any gym and try to pull off this and we’ll do it on Pay-Per-View, which we hadn’t done at the time. It was crazy; we did nine tournaments and seven were in a row every week. Everyone was resting during COVID, and we sweated creatively. I would say we’re still building on this foundation today. We still have good pay-per-view numbers and it was all thanks to that era. Tough times make you better, and that was our case because we didn’t give up.

You’re steadily approaching the 10-year anniversary of Oktagon MMA. How would you like the promotion to evolve in the near future?
Neruda: We definitely want to keep growing in Germany because here is the market. 85 million people and we just signed our deal with RTL Group, the second largest media house in all of Europe after BBC. That’s a big thing. From there, we want to go to other countries. Right now we have two main strategies. One is to focus solely on a country like France and build another branch of Oktagon strictly there. Still, we’re also interested in growing so massively in the European market that we can make tournaments around the countries separately without building a strong base. We’re ready for both possibilities, and we’re excited about what the future will bring.