Guy Mezger has turned a career as a fighter with the Lions Den into President of one of more the up and coming MMA promotions out there. 411Mania's Lotfi Sariahmed had the chance to talk to Mezger about everything HDNet Fights and more in this exclusive interview!
He's turned a storied MMA career into working with one of the most successful businessmen in America. Guy Mezger and Mark Cuban have been the men behind HDNet Fights since the beginning and have quickly turned it into one of the more important promotions in MMA today. 411Mania's Lotfi Sariahmed had the chance to talk with Guy Mezger, the President of HDNet Fights, about everything from the business side of MMA to Floyd Mayweather and HDNet's relationship.
How'd you join up with Cuban and what are your impressions of him having worked with him for a bit?
To answer the first question, I was contacted by HDNet because I had been consulting in the fight business. They had hired me to look at the idea of putting together some of their own events. From then I had a face to face with Mark (Cuban) about three weeks in because I wasn't really doing much for them at the time. Then he called and we had a face to face and we had a very positive meeting. It was very energetic meeting and one thing led to another. A lot of great ideas were exchanged. Mark was like, "This is awesome. Why don't you come aboard as more than just a consultant?" Basically he said they wanted to do an event in the next five weeks so we did.
Cuban's always been perceived as this businessman who's a bit out there and outspoken. In your dealings with him so far have you gotten that same impression or is he nothing like that at all?
I think he goes against the grain and against most business practices because he's extremely enthusiastic in what he does. When he gets behind something he gets behind it. He's almost like a kid at Christmas with his attitude. But by no means is he impulsive. The impression is he might seem impulsive but Mark is a pretty calculated guy. He just goes at it with a child-like gusto about it. But by no means is he impulsive or rash. He's very smart; he's one of the smartest guys I've dealt with. He has a lot of vision for what he does and that obviously rolls downhill in his other ventures with the Dallas Mavericks and HDNet Fights too.
What changes have you had to make from being a fighter to being a President of HDNet Fights?
There are numerous ones to be honest. There are a lot of different things. I mean sometimes you're dealing with people that don't necessarily get what you're doing and don't have the same passion you have for it. Some people that we have to deal with that are outside of the fight business tend to not carry the same amount of enthusiasm I do coming from the sport. I'll be honest though I've always been kind of a business guy. I actually promoted the very first MMA events in Texas ten years ago. I've always had a hand in the business stuff so I would say the transition probably wasn't as difficult for me as it is for other people because I've always been running businesses outside of being a fighter.
Let me ask you this. Is there anything you've found to be particularly difficult or have you just dealt with things as they've come?
Well I've basically just dealt with things as they come. The nice part about working with Mark is that he definitely creates an atmosphere for success. It's contagious. I want MMA to take off and needs to expand past the UFC to do that and so does Mark and so do the other people involved with it. I like the fact that we're set up for success. Like I said Mark sets up an atmosphere for us where we can be successful. Of course he curbs some of my enthusiasm with some of his realism and business savvy that I don't have. He made a great acquisition by bringing in Andrew Simon who's our CEO and he's a very knowledgeable guy who's very enthusiastic about the sport from the TV end and from the business end. I think we made a pretty good marriage for success as long as the MMA market stays strong we could be set up for good things.
This leads into my next couple of questions. What role to do you think HDNet on the whole is playing in MMA?
Well we're the largest broadcaster of MMA out there. Last month alone we had five live events. This month we have another two live events. In March we're going to have maybe four live events scheduled. We intend to be the home for MMA. How that impacts the MMA world we'll have to see but what I suspect it'll be and what I hope it'll be is that it expands and allow these athletes to become full time athletes as opposed to most of these guys who are part time athletes. Hopefully they'll be able to make a great living and have a great career and that's what we're looking at. I want to see this kids be successful. I want to see them have great careers and make some good money and be able to see them retire from this sport on a high note. That's one of my goals. Of course that's also in alignment with the success of HDNet and the UFC and any of these organizations. The misnomer is that people think we want to replace ProElite, the UFC or those other organizations out there. By no means do we want to do that. One day we hope to be able to work with them. I think that there will be some changes in the laws to make it more conducive for people to work together more. We look forward to that and I think everyone can benefit from a working relationship as opposed to an adversarial one.
Of course you're broadcasting all these MMA events but you're running your own events as well. The business model in MMA seems to be to model yourself after the UFC. On that note do you think broadcasting all these events might hurt your own organization?
To be honest that's the problem with the mentality of with what we are. Everyone is calling it an organization. It's which organization is bigger and better. And therefore what we do is every organization has their little champion. The UFC is obviously going to have their big champion and then what we do is so and so is the world champion of this and so and so is the world champion of that. We have more champions in MMA than boxing has with their titles. The idea of having an organization is going to stunt the growth of MMA. What we need to do is everyone needs to turn into promoters. We should have independent sanctioning bodies as much as we possibly can. I mean boxing started out that way and we obviously know that there is corruption that can happen in those things but hopefully we can avoid the bumps in the road with those things. That way instead of becoming an organization we become a promotional company. Really the UFC is just a promotional company that controls the belt and that controls the athlete. That model is really good for everyone to get things started but I think it's grown past that element. And I understand the UFC isn't too excited about that idea because they have such a good thing and they deserve all their success they really do. But I think it'll be forced on us with a Muhammad Ali Act or something like that. Muhammad Ali Act is specific to boxing only but I could only imagine that it's just a matter of time before that gets transferred over to MMA as well. It's going to in turn force some of these organizations to promotional companies and work as independent sanctioning bodies.
Is that the one thing you think that stands between MMA going from all these organizations with all these belts to one promotion where a world champion is really a world champion?
I think that's one of them. Once we clear that hurdle with a universal sanctioning body we'll have champions fighting champions and contenders fighting contenders. There will always be the problem with contenders themselves not wanting to fight each other. In happens in boxing where one guy decides to hold out and fight another guy for the money as opposed to another guy that's the #1 contender. There will always be hurdles in the way of pure sportsmanship, that's just the way it is. Whenever you add money to it you add the opportunity for corruption. One of the hurdles is getting that independent sanctioning body and then we can show some growth with the top guys fighting each other. We'd have to hope that the athletes would follow suit and want to keep the spirit of the game.
We just postponed it. You have to appreciate that when we had to postpone that event we were a company of 13 weeks. That's it. Really what needed to happen is we needed to sit back. We have some very important big deals coming forward including some athletes that I'm not at liberty to talk about. So we said if we're going to do this we're going to do it right. The expectations that Mark has we needed to have more time to get some of these things better organized. In the mean time it has allowed us to keep our word to our partners to help them develop some of their programs because again, it is quite a chore to do all these shows. People don't really appreciate how much effort we put in to making sure these guys shows look better. The reason that they look so good on HDNet is because HDNet Fights grooms these shows to look better and better and that takes a lot of energy. So by pushing our event back it allows us to have a much bigger event. We're really excited because if things go through the way we want it's going to be off the hook, it's going to be awesome. If things don't work out the way we want we'll still have an awesome card just not the one we want. We'll just move forward from then and until then you'll just have to stay tuned and check out all the different events that we have.
You mentioned delaying this Feb. 15th show because you wanted to have a bigger and better show later on. After HDNet Fights 2: Reckless Abandon there was a lot of talk that Mayhem and Trigg would fight each other after their wins on that card. There was a lot of speculation that that would be the main event on that Feb. 15th card. Then Trigg came out on I believe one of Sherdog's radio shows and said he wouldn't be able to do it. So how much of this had to do with one of your main guys not being able to compete on that first card?
I mean that's what Trigg said in the interview but I know Trigg would have been able to fight on that card. There was more or less what Trigg would have preferred to do versus what may have happened. Trigg's a warrior. He knows what our game plan was going to be and while he may have said he would have preferred to fight later on down the line he would have stepped up, I know he would have. He's that type of guy. But it just worked out better for everyone this way. He's going overseas to visit the troops now because we pushed this back.
You had mentioned bringing in some more athletes earlier. Are you worried about the depth of your roster and not having enough fighters that belong to HDNet?
The problem is always there with everybody being either a UFC fighter or not a UFC fighter. Everyone outside the UFC has to deal with that. We're in the process of bringing in some pretty awesome guys that we feel our going to be superstars. We're working on them being on our partner cards so everyone gets to see them. Generally the difference is perception. It's perceived now that the UFC has the best fighters and they probably do. But as people get to see these other fighters and watch them they'll be interested in them as well. Of course we plan on moving that forward. We have, with our partners, interchangeable contracts with them. We have athletes that can fight on any one of the HDNet sponsored cards. Again, we're looking to get out of this idea of the organizational mentality and work for the fighters. We don't want it organizationally driven. We want it athlete driven. If it's organizationally driven it won't grow. Boxing is athlete driven. Muhammad Ali changed the face of boxing. Guys have to thank Muhammad Ali for being millionaires because he's the guy that did it. He's the guy that got all these millions of dollars because he's such a colorful individual. Boxing didn't do that. Muhammad Ali did that for boxing. That's really what we want to do. We want to develop athletes and stars.
Speaking of being athlete-driven, the two biggest athletes out there are part of the dream fight MMA fans seem to always be talking about. We all know the back-story behind Randy Couture's and Fedor Emelianenko's situations. You offer a platform in HDNet Fights where these two could come together to broadcast this fight. What are your thoughts on potentially putting this fight together and how realistic do you see it being?
What can I say other than everyone wants that one? I mean to be honest that's a silly question. Everyone wants that fight. If we can swing and make that deal happen, holy smokes that would be awesome. Of course we're excited about that. There are a lot of elements to it. We understand the UFC has served Randy Couture and there are a lot of legal issues in that. The UFC will probably want to make sure that doesn't happen, again for their business interests. Lets hope and pray that something can be worked out so that two of the greatest heavyweights can throw down before they're 50 years old and give the fans what they want. I think the fans want that bout more than anything no matter who promotes that fight. It's a fight where the fans win.
I'd be remiss if I didn't close out the interview asking about Floyd Mayweather. There was a lot of talk about having him join HDNet Fights but there's also news that's come out that he's close to signing up for a rematch with Oscar De La Hoya. So what do you see him doing?
That would really be up to Mark to make any comment on that. I mean Floyd is an incredible athlete on top of being an incredible boxer. Of course he has to be dabbling with the idea of whether or not he could make it in MMA. If he is successful fighting in MMA against a credible opponent that would do wonders for his place in history as a fighting athlete. I know when I was kickboxing and I started fighting for the UFC I actually stopped fighting for the UFC just to win the title. I said I wanted to win the world title because it's a goal I had. Back then the UFC didn't have titles or anything. Whether I continue to do this or not it was a goal I wanted to accomplish. I'm sure Floyd is thinking the same thing. If not Floyd is a master showman. Having him in on this deal on the business end would be a phenomenal business deal for HDNet Fights. I couldn't really tell you what they're thinking because I know he is going to fight De La Hoya. So we don't know where that puts him in terms of fighting here. But just having him on the business end would do wonders for us.
Guy I really appreciate the time. Thanks again.
No problem. Anytime.
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Flashing Blade
