EliteXC's Jeremy Lappen: We Want to Make Our Fighters Pay-Per-View Stars

EliteXC is the only American mixed martial arts organization with a deal to put its fights on free TV in prime time. But while landing on network television was a huge step forward for MMA, the results so far have been mixed.

The first show on CBS, on May 31, was a success in the ratings, but a disappointment to many hard-core MMA fans who thought the quality of the fighting was substandard. The second show, last Saturday, featured better fights in the cage but a decline in the ratings. And this week it was announced that Gary Shaw, who a few months ago was the public face of the company, has resigned.

So as EliteXC looks ahead to its third CBS show, on October 4, what direction is the organization going in? I interviewed Jeremy Lappen, EliteXC's head of fight operations, about EliteXC's past, its future, and its most popular fighters, Kimbo Slice and Gina Carano.
Why did Gary Shaw resign?
Gary Shaw is actually still with the company as a consultant, but I think he felt that this is a taxing business. He was with the company from the very beginning, we all worked hard, and I think it took a tolll on his family life, on his health and on his boxing business. So I think he felt it best to take more of a behind the scenes role and also focus on his boxing as well.

So are you running things at EliteXC now?
I'm head of fight operations, which I've always been. We have a strong team and always have and really nothing has changed.

I think ProElite's stock had once been up around $15 a share and is now below $3 a share, is that right?
I don't actually know.

But is the company doing well financially?
Yeah, I think we're doing very well as far as accomplishing our goals. I mean when you start a business, any business, you're going to have a period of time before you're profitable. We spent money on acquisitions and building stars, and those are investments in the future. Things are going well. If you look at what we've done in the year and a half we've been around, it's pretty amazing: We're a brand-new company, we've established ourselves with a network TV deal and a premium cable deal, and we're establishing star fighters who fans want to see.

My sense on your second CBS show is that the quality of the MMA was better and the quality of the production was better, but there was less interest among casual fans, you didn't sell many tickets and the ratings were obviously down. What were your thoughts?
It was a successful event. We expected the ratings to be down slightly because of the time of year -- the middle of summer is hard to do anything from a television perspective -- and because the novelty of the first network TV MMA deal was gone. We were happy with the show. The fights were terrific, the audience was great, the arena was electric. Could we have sold more tickets? Absolutely. But we were happy with the event.

Did competition from the re-play of UFC 84 on Spike or the Cotto-Margarito fight on pay-per-view hurt your ratings?
I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I would think that the replay on Spike probably did not but the boxing event possibly. But I really don't know. My guess is that some of the people watching other programs didn't know we were on.

If people didn't know you were on, that would indicate to me that you didn't do a good enough job marketing.
That's always the end game: How do you reach the audience? How do you get the word out? From a marketing perspective I think we did a good job but you can always improve on everything.

Why was the show delayed on the West Coast? Isn't it usually better for sporting events to be shown live?
That's actually a CBS question. I think that they want to delay it on the West Coast because more people will be home at that time, but it's a CBS question.

The numbers reported to the California State Athletic Commission say Antonio Silva was the highest-paid fighter Saturday night by a large margin. Why did he make $200,000 while no one else made even half that and most made less than 10% of that?
Antonio Silva was making that type of money before he joined us, and in a competitive marketplace that's what it took to have him with us. I think a lot of the fighters you saw are on their way to making big paydays but aren't there yet. It's a question of supply and demand. It doesn't indicate their value, it's just where they were -- people's salaries move up in accordance with what they've made in the past.

I think the show went a long way toward establishing many of our fighters as stars. I think Cris Cyborg became a star. She's a great fighter and she's very exciting -- a vicious, intimidating woman and people are very interested in her and they're looking toward a potential showdown with Gina down the road.

I think Robbie Lawler established himself as one of the best if not the best 185-pound fighter in the world. Nick Diaz was great. Jake Shields is arguably the best 170-pounder in the world. He dismantled Nick Thompson in a minute. A lot of good things happened from that event, and we're getting the fighters exposure, that's what it's all about.

There's a general perception that -- with the exception of the most recent Affliction show -- MMA fighters are underpaid. Is that perception accurate?
No, I don't think so. It depends on who you're talking about. I think every fighter has a value based on how many tickets a fighter will sell, how many people will watch on television, and how much merchandise they can sell. And the truth of the matter is a lot of guys are overpaid in the beginning because we think we can build them into a fighter that people will want to see. And because the sport is so new, a lot of the economics are backwards.

I don't think categorically fighters are overpaid or underpaid, some are over some under. Would I like to see the athletes make more money? Absolutely. I was a manager for a long time and I would love to see those guys make a lot of money because they deserve it. Nothing would please me more than to see these guys make more money.

All four of the winners on the CBS card -- Cris Cyborg, Jake Shields, Nick Diaz and Robbie Lawler -- are fighters who MMA fans will want to see again, so when can we expect to see them?
We're putting our cards together now, as we speak. We have another big event September 20, an EliteXC event. We have a smaller ShoXC event on August 15 at Table Mountain Casino. We have at least five more events before the end of the year. So I would expect to see a lot of them again.

But we have more than just those four. Eddie Alverez, who's coming off an unbelievable fight in Japan, we want to see him fight again. We want to get our lightweight champion, K.J. Noons, back in their soon. And, of course, Kimbo Slice and Gina Carano will be on our October 4 show.

If Cyborg fights Gina Carano on October 4 I think it will be the biggest women's MMA fight ever. Is it going to happen?
We haven't set the card yet. I think if they don't fight October 4 and they both continue to win they will meet in the future. It's a very big fight and it'll keep getting bigger if they keep winning, and I think they're going to keep winning.

Who will Kimbo Slice fight on October 4?
We haven't decided on that yet.

Is there any chance of Kimbo taking on Antonio Silva for the EliteXC heavyweight belt, or is Kimbo not ready for a fighter of Silva's quality?
I don't think he'll take on Antonio Silva for his next fight. I think Kimbo can beat anybody on any given day. Kimbo's got a great standup game, he's a big puncher, he's a very good athlete, and he's still learning: I think his ground game has advanced considerably. I think it's a little unfair, people hold Kimbo up to such a high standard even though he's only had three fights. I think Kimbo and Antonio will fight some day. His next fight? I don't think so. But Kimbo would fight him in a second. He wants that belt.

To what extent will CBS use college football as a lead-in to try to attract viewers to your October 4 show?
I don't know the answer to that question. I hope they use everything they possibly can, and I'm sure they want to.

In my opinion the best pound-for-pound fighter you have under contract is Eddie Alvarez, but he splits time with Dream in Japan. When will we see him back in the U.S. and back with EliteXC?
He's our fighter. He's an EliteXC fighter. The contract with Dream is something we have to approve. We approved it in the past, we let him go over there, which we're happy to do because we believe fighters should fight wherever they can. We want the best to fight the best so you can have true world champions. We want to start unifying belts. Eddie is getting married in September and taking a little time off, but hopefully he'll fight for us by the end of the year.

Eddie might be our best pound-for-pound fighter, but we have a lot of great fighters. I think KJ's really underrated in the media. He's got a fantastic striking game, his takedown defense is terrific and he did beat Nick Diaz -- I know Diaz got cut, we'd love to do that fight again and see what would happen if it hadn't been stopped for a cut. And Nick is great, he beat Takanori Gomi. I think him against Eddie Alvarez would be great. Robbie Lawler and Jake Shields are great fighters.

Jake Shields is dominating his fights, he's now won five straight in the first round, and since he's not going to fight any of the welterweights in UFC, how do you find a good opponent for him?
In all honestly, it's difficult. We found the very best fighter we could find for him in Nick Thompson, and he just walked right through him.

When will Frank Shamrock fight again?
I don't know. I know he wants to fight and thinks he'll be ready for the end of the year.

What did you think of the first Affliction show?
I enjoyed it. I was there, I thought the fights were good, I thought the Andrei Arlovski-Ben Rothwell fight was very exciting. I was surprised at how quickly Fedor took apart Tim Sylvia, I thought Sylvia had a decent chance of winning that fight. Fedor really just took it to him. I enjoyed it. I think from a fan perspective it was a fun show. I didn't see the TV production but form a live event standpoint I enjoyed it. I just like MMA.

Is the future of EliteXC on pay-per-view?
There's no doubt that I think in this business that's where the revenues are, I think you have to build pay-per-view stars to have a viable business. That's what we're trying to build our fighters toward is pay-per-view stars. I don't think it's solely pay per view -- I don't believe in that model, but I think pay-per-view is an important part of our business.

But I think the fights have to be pay-per-view worthy. We're not going to put things on pay-per-view if they're not pay-per-view worthy. It's hard to get people to part with their money if they're not fights people are excited about. We want to do pay-per-view once it's big enough and meaningful enough to be worth fans' money.

Any final thoughts on Saturday's show?
It was a very successful event. The ratings weren't as high but that was somewhat to be expected. I think you'll see the ratings continue to rise and go back up, but still, at the end of the day, you had almost 3 million people watching that fight. Not too many fights have 3 million people watching. That's a great thing for our sport, and I would venture to guess that almost all of them will tune in to watch again. That was a great night of fights.