Industry Profile: Joe Cavallaro, World Championship Fighting Promoter
Published by Jim Genia on June 25th, 2009 in Current Events

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There are grassroots promotions, and there are dominant grassroots promotions that hold sway over large chunks of real estate. With six well-received events under its belt since September of 2007, as well as a television program showcasing their greatest hits on a regional sports channel, Massachusetts’ World Championship Fighting is a dominant grassroots promotion. You can thank promoter Joe Cavallaro for that.

A native of town just north of Boston called Lynnfield, Cavallaro’s introduction to MMA stretches back to his days spent working in a hotel and sweating in a boxing gym with pal Dana White, an era that saw both Cavallaro and White take to the emerging sport like mice discovering pots of simmering cheese fondue. “When Dana got involved with it, that’s when I started going to the fights a lot,” says Cavallaro. “I fell in love with it.”

How did the WCF come about? “I have two businesses,” says Cavallaro. “I manage pro fighters, too. I manage Kenny Florian and Marcus Davis, I’ve worked with guys like Drew Fickett, Alex Karalexis, Sam Hoger, Sean Gannon, Kevin Jordan – a whole bunch of guys over the years. And Sam had lost a couple of fights in the UFC, he’d lost three fights in a row. Sam’s one of those guys who was right at the top of his division, but he just dropped a split decision to Rashad Evans in a fight that we thought he won, he lost a decision to Stephan Bonnar and a decision to Lyoto Machida. So I thought it would be good to start an organization, bring a guy like Sam back, get him a couple fights and get him a few wins, and build him back up and send him to the UFC. That was my original idea. It just kind of spun out of that.”

He adds: “I had been watching the UFC, and watching the numbers and seen how they did things, and I’d seen guys come and go who had great business models – I mean, there are some great organizations that got into it a little bit too early, before the general public knew what it was. Obviously, I think ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ show turned that around for everybody. I’m a sales guy by trade, and we have a saying: ‘The numbers don’t lie.’ When it got to a point where I could see there was really a market, especially on a regional level – which is what my show is – it looked like the timing was right. And we’ve done well.”

Cavallaro’s goals for the WCF? “I’d like to do pay-per-view eventually,” he says. “I think there’s a big, big market for this and mixed martial arts in general. I don’t think there needs to be just one pay-per-view provider, I think it’s going to work more like a boxing-model. It’s something I know you just can’t start out of the gate and just do – you need to establish yourself as a brand and get a market, get a hold of the market that you’re in.”

In that regard, Cavallaro has made great strides. “We just did a television show and signed a deal with Comcast Sports New England. It’s on every cable provider in New England, so it’s on in six states and four million houses. That’s a pretty deep reach. And it’s a sports channel – the Boston Celtics play on that channel – so this is something that’s viewed pretty widely in New England. We went in and did a television show and called it ‘WCF Rewind’. It’s a look back at fights that have already happened. One of the things that I really need to be able to do is to develop an interest in who the fighters are who are fighting for us. And I think that’s one of the things that I’ve been able to capitalize on and do different than other promoters. People know who the guys who fight for us are, and people care about why the guys are fighting. I think that that goes a long way with the fights, it goes a long way with the fans, and our goal is to make our brand, World Championship Fighting, what the Celtics are to basketball or what the Red Sox are to baseball. We want to be New England’s premiere brand of mixed martial arts. I think we’re pretty much well on the way there.”

He adds: “If you can build some characters and build some following behind the fighters, and make stars out of these guys, even if it’s just regional, I think it make a lot of sense. That’s really our business model now.”

For the past few years the Bay State has been devoid of an athletic commission’s sway. That condition that may soon change. Cavallaro’s thoughts on the impending legislation that would bring Massachusetts MMA back into the regulatory fold? “I think we’re going to have to pay five percent in taxes,” he says with a laugh, then goes on to say, “I actually lent support to the bill. It was me, the UFC and Kenny Florian who went to the meeting with the Senate when they proposed the bill. I’m all for it. I think it gives the fans a consistent product, and it gives us a unified way of doing things. I think it’s going to be good. It’s going to be great with the UFC coming to Boston.”

Approximately 3,700 fans packed into the 4,000-seat Shiners’ Auditorium for WCF 6 – solid numbers for any grassroots-level promotion. Friday’s WCF installment, which features EliteXC veteran Calvin Kattar and local favorites like Woody Weatherby, Elias Rivera and Scott Rehm, could very well top those attendance figures.

“The guys who fight on our shows are some of the best fighters in all of New England,” says Cavallaro with confidence. “We’re by far the biggest show in the Northeast.”

Given the number of Northeast events out there, that says a lot.