MMA in China: Sinking beneath the waves
Joel Resnick: “Yes, we owe everyone from RUFF 13 their money. But we’re gonna pay. I haven’t gone anywhere, I am not hiding from anyone. RUFF is not dead.”
The vast majority of news in the MMA space is breaking, and not thoughtful. He called HIM a PUBE hair – hahahaha. Or he BROKE his knee and then HE broke his knee and then he broke his KNEE – oh man bummer.
Vice’s FightLand is different, and in many ways better. It can take an outwardly mundane subject like a day in the gym, and expose how fascinating it can be. Or FightLand takes a step back and looks at the broader, formerly indistinct picture.
A recent article by Sascha Matuszak looks at the enormous difficulties of promoting mixed martial arts in China, the land many consider the birthplace of martial arts. Matuszak noted that ONE FC, the largest Asian MMA promotion, has stumbled, with the October 31st show delayed until an unknown date. RUFF has a worse problem – no money.
The Shanghai-based MMA promotion has been very silent following a spectacular show in June, which showcased some new talent in front of a mostly comp’d audience of a couple thousand.
I spoke with founder Joel Resnick last weekend and he said, Yes, we owe everyone from RUFF 13 their money. But we’re gonna pay. I haven’t gone anywhere, I am not hiding from anyone. RUFF is not dead. We’re alive, and not only that, we’re gonna thrive. In a couple weeks we’re going to make an announcement, and we’re gonna blow a lot of people away, and a lot of haters are going to be pissed off.”
It’s business, Joel tells me. Shit happened. Sponsors pull out, partners split town, money dries up. At this point, most operations fold up and spend the rest of their lives bitterly discussing what could’ve been with the inner circle and anyone else who will listen. For the majority of the thousands of martial arts related businesses in China, it’s someone playing with someone else’s money. After Joel’s original partner, Saul Rajsky, left the organization last year, it’s been mostly Resnick money tied up in RUFF.
When it’s your own money, it’s not as easy to walk away. We’re in it for the long haul. We’re not going away.
At this point, few in the China MMA community would really care if RUFF makes it or not. If they don’t, it wouldn’t be a surprise. Like Art of War and Legend FC before them, and like a war monument of other gonna strike it rich in China businesses since the dawn of gunboat diplomacy, sinking beneath the waves garners hardly a stir. In fact, failure is expected.
While the Western-style players try and maintain their business models, the local Chinese players are morphing in and out of names and holding one-off events on a weekly basis, featuring a burlesque list of tomato cans, wannabes, champs and former champs, and anyone else who can throw a few strikes. Sponsors pop in and out. The circus tent appears, disappears, and reappears again like a silk-print fan hiding a painted face. Contracts are ephemeral, doctors and the rest of the crew (judges and refs) may or may not know what they are doing. Fighters can expect to get stiffed every so often.
Because most local Chinese operations aren’t about contracts and brands and dominating any sort of landscape … they just want to swallow as much as they can before they sink beneath the waves, remerge, and sink below again.