MMA Upstarts – Dropping Like Flies?
Published by on May 26th, 2008 in Operation Cleanup

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By Charles Jay
Commentary on MMA history…as it’s happening
DROPPING LIKE FLIES?

Kelly Perdew, a West Point graduate and winner of the “Apprentice” reality show in 2004 who has been the president of the ProElite organization that has as one its arms the Elite XC promotion, has announced that he is leaving to join up with a fantasy sports site called “Rotohog.” No, he’s not going to run his own fantasy baseball team. He is going to run the site, or at least act like he is.

Perdew apparently is getting a lot of mileage out of his tenure with Donald Trump. I don’t know how much of a “ceremonial” position he had with ProElite; Gary Shaw has been more or less the “face man” for the company as it did its promotional business, and has made the deals with the venues and the fighters.

What’s interesting is that Perdew left the MMA company, which would on the

surface of things appear to be on the cusp of some major success with its deal to be aired on CBS, for a fantasy sports site. And I don’t want to disparage that, but it’s a site that has an awful lot of competitors, including CBS itself, who are dealing with essentially the same concept.

Funny, when you think of it, that Perdew has now been involved with”reality,” then Kimbo, and now “fantasy,” and when you think about it,they’re all pretty much the same.

The key here, I guess, is that, according to the big announcement, he’s going to a “well-funded fantasy-sports website.” That means, one supposes, that they were able to convince some investors to throw some cash into this new venture in what I imagine has to be a saturated marketplace for fantasy sports leagues, whatever kind of “twist” they offer, as in the case of Rotohog, which is incorporating aspects of “trading” as in the stock market (seems like purely a stock play to me).

I’m wondering if what it also means is to imply that, somehow, ProElite is NOT particularly well-funded. Of course, the rumors have persisted that Elite XC is not doing very well, and the joy over this CBS deal has turned into quite a bit of uncertainty after Sumner Redstone, the executive chairman of CBS Corporation, doesn’t really want MMA on the airwaves and is none too happy that Les Moonves, the CEO of the CBS Network, made the decision to put it on (first show is May 31).

Meanwhile, the IFL, which is said to be hemorrhaging money, has let a couple of key people go – Keith Evans and Lisa Faircloth. Let’s put it in perspective for a moment: they held the positions of Vice President of Operations and Director of Events, respectively. Maybe I’m stupid. But I have spent quite a bit of time in and around promotional organizations and I think that in terms of day-to-day management, that pretty much covers most of the ballgame, doesn’t it?

Jay Larkin is still the CEO, but the former Showtime executive is probably a little beyond doing things that are “little picture,” so to speak, and so what we’re looking at is a somewhat scaled-down, rudderless ship.

And I don’t have to have been around boats much to know that a rudderless ship usually sinks.