President of HDNet Fights, Guy Metzger, talks about the vision of the company and how he first got involved, some of the differences between HDNet fights and the UFC, and what they're trying to accomplish as they place their emphasis on doing what's best for the fighters and their careers. "We want people to know this is where they can come see some good fights," stated Metzger as he discussed their plans for the future and how they plan on getting there. You don't want to miss what he had to say about a fighters union, insurance for fighters, new sponsorships for the sport, and details about some of the UFCs PPV events. Check it out.
PC: How is everything going Guy?
GM: Everything is going good. We are moving forward with our next card for HDNet Fights on December 15th. We have a really strong card with real good matchups. We have Jason "Mayhem" Miller, he's fun and he'll be fighting Sean Salmon, as well as Frank Trigg fighting Edwin Dewees and those will be our main events. We also have Yves Edwards, Chris Bowles, Jason House, a real strong new 185 pound guy named CB Dollaway; he's a freaking stud.
PC: Pete Spratt will be on this card as well huh?
GM: Yes and Pete Spratt. Oh yeah, one of the old favorites.
PC: How did you hook up with HDNet Fights and eventually become the President of the organization?
GM: I was consulting for a company called Art of War. I set up a deal between Art of War and HDNet to become partners and it turned out that the Art of War guys didn't do a real good job in preparing for the show. They had never really done a show or anything so it was close to being a big freaking disaster. The guy from HDNet, Ron Kruck, who's a reporter and also a commentator, me, him and another guy named Jim Norris sat down and put the show together with about 18 hours before the show. When they were talking about having somebody come on as a consultant, Ron Kruck threw my name out there as somebody that could get the job done. That's how it started. I started off as a consultant and then later, as their division expanded, they asked me to come on as the President. I had to basically fire development and matchmaking.
PC: Were you a little reluctant to get into an organization that didn't have any prior MMA history?
GM: No, not at all. My vision has always been to create a really good fight crowd in the Dallas area. I grew up here and I had to spend most of my career in Japan. It was just nice, you know, there were a lot of athletes up here and it was an opportunity to grow on. I really think there should be an alternative to the UFC. There's nothing wrong with the UFC, but I just think that there needs to be another airline. If there's only American Airlines, then there's only so much that they can cover and the airline business wont grow. There's enough room for American Airlines, Delta, Continental and United. Really, that's our intention is to be the Continental to the UFC.
PC: Any time a new organization comes along, the general thought is that they're trying to be direct competition with the UFC. That's not what you guys are trying to do?
GM: Our intention is to be a destination to these guys as an alternative to the UFC. It's not if they can't make it in the UFC. That's kind of a problem with what's going on. The UFC has been branded as the pinnacle of what we're trying to do, and rightfully so. They deserve that. In order for a sport to grow, they have to get outside of that medium. There has to be a degree of independence in what's going on. What we do is hold non-exclusive contracts and they can fight for whoever they want to fight for. We want the champions from the UFC to fight the champions from HDNet, Sport Fight and Ring of Combat in order for us to create a real world champion because the reality is that the UFC championship is considered the world champion, but it's not really. Only if you are a part of the UFC. It's considered the world champion because they have the best fighters, but the reality of it is if you're not under their contract or under their stable, then you can't fight for the UFC so it is actually limited. They do pay the most money, so they do attract the best athletes. Look at Fedor Emelianenko, who's considered by most people the best heavyweight out there, but he doesn't want to deal with Dana White and some of the dynamics and I'm not in on the conversations, but I hear things secondhand, probably a bit more of a clearer picture than most people get because I hear some of the ridiculous conversations people have and the underground things and stuff like that about it. The reality is they don't want to relinquish the control that the UFC has over its athletes and it's understandable from both ends. The UFC wants to control their investment in these guys and I understand that aspect, but I also understand the other aspect in this business of fighters wanting to be involved in Sambo and other aspects that are very important to us and the athletes and they don't want to surrender a lot of that stuff to the UFC. There are pros and cons to everything. What we are trying to do is say, "Hey, listen, we need to make money and be successful in what we do, but we also want to do what's best for the athletes." We're investigating how to create an insurance medial, which is awfully tough because we don't control what's going on with the athlete so it's hard for us to get insurance for the athlete. We are investigating how to put together a fighters union where we could create the ability for them to get the proper insurance for them to be able to protect their money. We're also collectively looking at how we can break these standards outside of the sponsorship markets, outside of the supplement companies, energy drinks and mixed martial arts clothing wear. How do we get Nike, Ford, Chevy and American Airlines behind us? How can we get outside of this medium?
PC: Guy, do you think that your fighters benefit from you being an actual mixed martial artist whereas other organization's Presidents have never really been through certain scenarios as a fighter?
GM: They got a friend in me. They have a friend in me for the fact that I'm going to shoot it straight with them. I know a lot of these guys come fromÂ…a lot of Pride guys come from Brazil, but they want way too much money for what they want in America. I keep telling them that I think you're worth $100,000. I do think you're a good enough athlete. The problem is it's not justifiable for an American audience because they do not know who you are. I'm honest with them and I tell them what we could work with is building them up to an American audience and getting them to understand that you're this good of an athlete. The fact of the matter is you could be the greatest athlete in the world, but not known in America and the American market. It's like the greatest soccer player in the world is not going to make the same amount of money as Beckham is. He comes over here and is the darling of American media. He comes over from a great program in Madrid, so people are like, "Wow, we know who this guy is." He married one of the Spice Girls so he's in the media and is very known to the American audience. That justifies him getting that money. The greatest soccer player in the world, and I don't know who that is because I don't follow soccer (editor's note: although we'd guess that it would probably be the Brazilian Ronaldinho who's just sick-nasty when it comes to soccer), but he's going to make a great chunk of change where he's at, but if he comes to America where soccer is not as popular and he's not well-known, then we just can't justify paying him millions.
The thing you asked is do these guys have a friend in me. Absolutely because I'm going to be straight with them. I'm going to try and get them as much money as we can; that's smart. The aspect of what we're doing, and it may be a little bit disappointing, but they thought Mark was going to come in like all of the other companies with these huge promises and bring Fedor in and all of these guys in and spend millions and millions of dollars to make nothing; to lose money. Mark Cuban did not become a billionaire because he knew how to lose money. He became a billionaire because he learned how to make money. His intention is to be around long-term and to be around long-term, you don't need to go out spending stupid money on things we don't need to spend it on. Our intentions are to create a market that the fans can trust, which is a big deal. The UFC has really built that trust and whether they keep it or not is irrelevant at this point because they have a great market brand. People know the UFC. That's what we're trying to do. We are trying to create HDNet Fights and HDNet Fights Presents, which is our partners like Sport Fight, Steele Cage Productions and Ring of Combat, and hopefully we'll be able to make a deal with some of these other larger companies overseas. HDNet Fights wants to bring the very best that's out there outside of the UFC. We want people to know this is where they can come see some good fights on Friday night and that, eventually, we'll grow to where we could sustain a good Pay Per View.
What people don't realize is that the UFC still makes a good bit of change on PPV because it's the UFC brand, but it is a huge difference and the UFC kind of inflates this, but we get the real deal because we're involved so we have the rights to see the real deal on this, but it's a huge difference when the PPV is Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell or Tito Ortiz; especially when it was Ken Shamrock and Tito together. They don't quite sell as much without each other, but they still, Tito and Ken Shamrock, are big sellers. Maybe a little bit less than what they were before. The guys that are really selling those PPVs are those four guys. It's a big difference in them to when they're fighting and when they're not fighting. What we realize at HDNet Fights is doing a PPV with good fighters does not necessarily make a good PPV buy. We understand that so we decide how we can get the best fighters that we possibly can and put them on free TV. HDNet is pretty much free TV. I think it's a $5 upgrade package. Five bucks is five bucks and you get all of the HD channels. It's really free TV because most people are going with High Def anyway. I'm probably the only guy I know that doesn't have a High Def TV. My wife keeps asking me to get a High Def TV and I'm like, "we watch 1 hour of TV a day." When I come home from work and I just want to zone out, I can't even tell you what I watch. I told her I flip on it, I eat dinner and act like I'm listening to you when you're talking and then I go to bed. That's the extent of my TV watching. I make a joke about that, but the reality is the future is in HD. We are going to be a free TV channel and, eventually, what HD wants to be is an HBO or Showtime for this market. We are still growing that market. We don't do a lot of original TV. The 2 successful original things that we do is Dan Rather, whose show is very popular on HDNet, and then HDNet Fights which is the most popular. We want to grow them very slowly and let people see our fighters and introduce new fighters. CB Dollaway is an example of a new fighter that people don't know who is a young, freaking stud. I think within a year's period, he can hang with anybody in the 185 pound or 205 pound weight class.
PC: So he could fluctuate between the 2 weight classes?
GM: Yeah, he's a big guy, but I think he'll be a lot more successful at 185 and he could make the weight easy and still be strong; he's a freaking stud. We have Chris Bowles, who's 8-1 and a slightly older fighter, who is 155 pounds that people don't know because he's never been in Pride or the UFC. They are some phenomenal athletes that really just need their chance to shine. Alex Drody is another one who has fought in the UFC and Pride, but not with a huge amount of success because of where he was in his life, but has made a remarkable rebirth after a 6-year layoff and hopefully we get him involved. There's always a guy who you think will be great and they turn out to not be, but that's Murphy's Law. There's a heavyweight out there named Sunia Filikitonga, and I butcher the poor guys name every time I say it so I just call him Sunia because he's Samoan and his name is hard to pronounce. He's a phenomenal athlete and he walks around at like 275 when he's down to fight weight and he could easily walk around at 300 pounds and still be at fight weight. I just want to bring him down to the heavyweight class because it's a more popular class than super heavyweight. He's a former Dallas Cowboy, but he doesn't fall into the trend of ex-football players that can't fight. He really could fight. He has really good ground game, his standup game is not great, but when you weight 265 pounds and you're as strong as this guy, you don't have to be the best boxer in the world. His strength is phenomenal and he's a genetic freak. He puts his knuckles on someone and they go to sleep. Here's a guy that could be a real contender in the heavyweight division down the road. We want to build these guys up and that's just a couple of guys. We have a lot of guys coming out of the woodworks, who understand what our message is and what we want to accomplish, that want to get onboard. That's why we want to have great fight companies and work with them in developing the talent so that we have those Sugar Ray Leonards, Muhammad Alis and the Mike Tysons and all of the greats; the Durans of our sport. This cannot be done if it's just the UFC. It's just too limited. I'm not holding my breathe on this, but we eventually, down the road, would like to see the Sport Fight champion fight the HDNet champion and the winner fight the King of Cage vs. the UFC champion winner. Then have some unification fights in all weight classes and have some legitimate champions. That would be awesome. I don't hold my breathe on it happening, but that is our vision.
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