And Caldwell, who co-founded the MMA apparel giant with Charles “Mask” Lewis in 1997, believes TapouT’s new parent company, Authentic Brands Group (ABG), can take it to a level of visibility associated with brands such as Nike, Reebok and Under Armour.

“We had formulated a plan in our head how we thought that would get done,” Caldwell told MMAjunkie.com. “But things like that take money. So you need to bring in the right guys to take the brand to that level, and these were the guys.”

“This is regular business .People who don’t understand business make this out to be something of an anomaly. Businesses go through this all the time, and that’s how they move forward.”

“[ABG] believes that this is the fastest growing sport in the world, that this is going to be in line with basketball or baseball or hockey, and TapouT could be as big as a Nike or an Under Armour. We were all saying the same stuff (in negotiations), so that was exciting for us.”

“We’re working on a new secret short that I can’t talk too much about, but it’s going to be the best fighting short ever made. Pieces like that will separate us from everyone in the business.”

“Nike does somewhere around $35 billion a year,” he said. “That’s billion with a ‘b.’ Last I checked, we did just under 200 million. So I think we have a long way to go before we hit saturation.”

“At the end, we knew it was something that (Mask) would have wanted. We still feel like he lives in the structure of this company, and we’ll continue to work hard to make it everything we want it to be.”

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