Reed: WEC stepping out of UFC’s shadow
Heavy.com: How hard has it been for you guys, conceptually, to find a way to promote these lighter weight guys?…
Heavy.com: How hard has it been for you guys, conceptually, to find a way to promote these lighter weight guys? These are weight classes no one in America had seen before, and you are headlining shows with them. How hard has that been for you when people are used to seeing Chuck Liddell and Brock Lesnar and you’re giving them something entirely different?
Reed Harris: When we decided to focus on the lighter weights we knew we had our work cut out for us. But if you look at boxing for example, it took many yeas, but now the lightweight guys are the guys everybody is interested in. If you look at the time frame, I only started really focusing on the light weights about eight months ago. Now look where we are at. Everyone in the MMA industry says the best lightweights in the world fight for WEC. I get calls from across the world, from Japan, from Korea, from Brazil, with coaches saying ‘I’ve got lightweight fighters we want to bring into the WEC, because these guys want to fight the best.’ It used to be the other way around. We used to have to chase after them.
I think in the next year you’re going to see a lot of things happening in the WEC. We’ve got a new deal with Versus. We’re going to go to the PPV model. We’re going to possibly go to Mexico and Canada and expand internationally. We’re going to do more shows. I’m looking forward to next year. You’re going to see alot of things happen with the WEC and I think that we are starting to step out of the shadow of the UFC. They are our parent company and they cast a big shadow. I think going to the lighter fighters, which was something Dana (White) wanted us to do and, by the way, I didn’t want to do. Now I look back and I’m really glad we did that.
Heavy.com: There’s recently been a lot of talk, about you guys going to the PPV model. You mentioned it a second ago. What would the metrics be for that? What would be considered a success? Obviously the WEC is a company that is not doing the same kind of television ratings as the UFC, and traditionally the TV audience becomes the PPV audience. What would be a success considering the smaller audience?