Starting my own kickboxing promotion...need ideas!

[chrissyp]

As the title states, i'm in the process of hashing out the ideas with a friend of mine, a MMA promoter about doing a kickboxing show in a cage.

Right now, I want a name...something not generic like "ultimate cage kickboxing" . I'd like someting with almost a timeless name, like how "Glory" or "Pride FC" ...something unique.

Thoughts? Ideas?

The 2nd thing, is rules. I'm thinking Glory rules with elbows and karate sweeps and spinning back fist allowed. Just my personal preference. I'd like to know out of curiosity what rules you personally like for kickboxing, or would like to see more of!

[Hawkmoon]

Me personally I'd drop the use of sweeps !

Not that I dislike them I enjoy them, but a fighter down for no apparent reason simply stops the fight and tends to a stop start etc type thing.

Best let the fighters knock each other down to floor!

(Excuse the possible connection to me not where I'm going, just a phase in this chat)

Spectators enjoy a knockdown no matter what or who so long as its after a punch, kick and so on, sweeps tend to be seen as trip to the uninitiated!

[chrissyp]

Me personally I'd drop the use of sweeps !

Not that I dislike them I enjoy them, but a fighter down for no apparent reason simply stops the fight and tends to a stop start etc type thing.

Best let the fighters knock each other down to floor!

(Excuse the possible connection to me not where I'm going, just a phase in this chat)

Spectators enjoy a knockdown no matter what or who so long as its after a punch, kick and so on, sweeps tend to be seen as trip to the uninitiated!

I see your point of view. I personally like them from my using them in my karate Background. But from a spectators POV,I agree!

[sensei8]

A title...hhmmm...

How about..."Victory"?? I'm terribly at this!! I do believe that if you had a ONE WORD TITLE, that's easy to remember as well as catchy, it would go along way. Seems like all of the good one are gone!

"Champion"...I don't like that one either.

Man, this is hard!!

[chrissyp]

A title...hhmmm...

How about..."Victory"?? I'm terribly at this!! I do believe that if you had a ONE WORD TITLE, that's easy to remember as well as catchy, it would go along way. Seems like all of the good one are gone!

"Champion"...I don't like that one either.

Man, this is hard!!

I like where you're going. I like the idea of a short, catchy title. ideas i liked right now are "Triumph" or "Triumph fighting championship" I also like "fighting spirit"

[Wado Heretic]

Out of context: I re-read the opening post after typing a lot of the below. A lot of it is irrelevant, as Chrissyp is working with a friend on the promotion side, but I still wanted to post it as I consider it useful advice for people going from the ground up and I would rather have not wasted the effort in typing. I was once an amateur trying to make it as a professional kick-boxer, and have done some professional wrestling booking, so not exactly an expert but just want to offer the best I can from my experiences.

I would concur that a good single word name is a good idea, but you should also consider whether the word you choose works as initialism if you add further words to the name. For example does TFC (Triumph fighting championship) sound good? It sounds okay to me but sounds too reminiscent of some other brands; just another thing to consider.

I would also argue that considering the rules before other important factors is putting the cart before the horse. You need to ask several important questions:

1. What is your talent pool? Are you planning to derive this from local fighters, or outsource to a broader pool, and are you aiming to be a grooming ground for amateurs to debut and advance into the professional arena or do you want to use established professionals from the get go?

2. How do you gather these fighters? Are you going to offer guaranteed contacts for X amount of fights and thus cover their living expenses to train for said fights, or do you plan to treat them as independent contractors and only pay them on a fight by fight basis?

3. Once you have the answers to the above, then you have to consider your presentation format. Are you going to be a league system, with rankings to establish contenders for titles, or will you use a tournament format? If you use the league system than you might find you have to offer guaranteed contracts to keep fighters reigned in. A tournament system would be cheaper in that you could pay only for the tournament participation, but ultimately you might find it difficult to get fighters to return unless the pay out is particularly good; this can be troublesome with getting competitive and popular champions to return if they are offered better deals elsewhere, and this can undermine drawing power.

4. Once you have the format then what are you going to be; an internet first promotion, or a local area first promotion? Tournaments can have excellent local drawing power, but have little staying power in the online realm. In contrast, a league system might have trouble keeping local interest due to being far more longitudinal and requiring more than passing interest to follow, and thus is much better suited to a recorded and streamed internet format.

5. Finally you can get to your rules; if it is a tournament you need to make the rules more limited for the purposes of safety in the opening rounds, and even up to the semi-finals, to reduce injury. You might have to forbid elbows, or sweeps, until the finals as they can easily injure and cause even a winner to drop out after their match is finished for example. Whereas, a league format, where fighters only fight once can allow much more liberal rules as injury does not endanger throwing the whole night into chaos.

However, even then you have to always consider your available resources. If you only have Muay Thai kick-boxers available en masse, then you might have to go with Thai rules because that is who you have available to fight. This is true of what ever format is predominant. If you want a true grab-bag approach that is very style versus style orientated, then you need a rule set which allows all competitors their best weapons, but at the same time you have to avoid boring your audience with tactics which cause unnecessary stoppages. Now you could allow sweeps, but what does the sweep earn the sweeper? Do you have knock-down rules where when you are knocked down X amounts of times then it counts as a TKO? Such a rule could add some exciting tension, but might get some scorn from people who might not view such a point victory as valid in full-contact. Have to keep in mind that you might not please everyone; but that you should consider mass appeal above what you want to see.

Also, speaking of available resources and going back to getting fighters. You could have a team based format where different gyms send representative fighters, and you have both independent fighter championships but also a team league. Good promotion for the gyms, and could help you get fighters on the cheap, but you might end up with amateurs trying to become professionals rather than high-quality established competitors. Really does depend on what you want to do with the fighters; do you want to be creating professionals, or using professionals?

A cage could be both a boon and a bust in kick-boxing. Unlike MMA where one needs the space and the rigidity of a cage wall for grappling, in kick-boxing that extra space can just become space for avoiding fighting, and the rigidity of the cage can prevent one slipping away from being caught when brought to the cage wall and lead to a clinch that goes no where. The ropes of a traditional boxing ring allow fighters more manoeuvrability when caught up against the ropes than a cage wall will, and helps keep the fight mobile. Also, the smaller size of a traditional ring better facilities a striking exchange as the space to avoid said exchange is very restricted. Think Ali’s rope-a-dope strategy, he was still eating punches even though he was basically running the whole fight; it kept it unusual and exciting. That is what you want in a striking exchange; high-intensity and the drama of two fighters trying to knock each other down or out.

Over-all; just avoid gimmicks beyond letting fighters build a persona that your audience want to follow. If the cage is going to be a gimmick, recognise it as a gimmick; but if you can test the theory and keep it interesting than go for it.

[Hawkmoon]

QQ: The cage, is what shape?

I'm thinking its an octagon ... eight sides... Muay Thai is the "Art of Eight Limbs", it makes use of punches, kicks, elbows and knee strikes ... eight "points of contact"...like the chaos symbol.

Chaos of Muay Thai ...

[sensei8]

A title...hhmmm...

How about..."Victory"?? I'm terribly at this!! I do believe that if you had a ONE WORD TITLE, that's easy to remember as well as catchy, it would go along way. Seems like all of the good one are gone!

"Champion"...I don't like that one either.

Man, this is hard!!

I like where you're going. I like the idea of a short, catchy title. ideas i liked right now are "Triumph" or "Triumph fighting championship" I also like "fighting spirit"

All of the good names are gone now...like...Strikeforce. That's a one word catchy title if I've ever seen one before.

On your "Triumph", I'd suggest this..."Triumphant"...it's one word, and boy oh boy, it's kind of catchy too. "Triumph fighting championship" is good too, but for me, it's a mouthful. So, maybe do like Ultimate Fighting Championship has done, and done quite well...

Brand Management!! Ultimate Fighting Championship is a mouthful too, but it has branded UFC as one of the most successful branding managements that the world has ever seen. So, maybe you could brand "Triumph fighting championship" into TFC.

[chrissyp]

Out of context: I re-read the opening post after typing a lot of the below. A lot of it is irrelevant, as Chrissyp is working with a friend on the promotion side, but I still wanted to post it as I consider it useful advice for people going from the ground up and I would rather have not wasted the effort in typing. I was once an amateur trying to make it as a professional kick-boxer, and have done some professional wrestling booking, so not exactly an expert but just want to offer the best I can from my experiences.

I would concur that a good single word name is a good idea, but you should also consider whether the word you choose works as initialism if you add further words to the name. For example does TFC (Triumph fighting championship) sound good? It sounds okay to me but sounds too reminiscent of some other brands; just another thing to consider.

I would also argue that considering the rules before other important factors is putting the cart before the horse. You need to ask several important questions:

1. What is your talent pool? Are you planning to derive this from local fighters, or outsource to a broader pool, and are you aiming to be a grooming ground for amateurs to debut and advance into the professional arena or do you want to use established professionals from the get go?

2. How do you gather these fighters? Are you going to offer guaranteed contacts for X amount of fights and thus cover their living expenses to train for said fights, or do you plan to treat them as independent contractors and only pay them on a fight by fight basis?

3. Once you have the answers to the above, then you have to consider your presentation format. Are you going to be a league system, with rankings to establish contenders for titles, or will you use a tournament format? If you use the league system than you might find you have to offer guaranteed contracts to keep fighters reigned in. A tournament system would be cheaper in that you could pay only for the tournament participation, but ultimately you might find it difficult to get fighters to return unless the pay out is particularly good; this can be troublesome with getting competitive and popular champions to return if they are offered better deals elsewhere, and this can undermine drawing power.

4. Once you have the format then what are you going to be; an internet first promotion, or a local area first promotion? Tournaments can have excellent local drawing power, but have little staying power in the online realm. In contrast, a league system might have trouble keeping local interest due to being far more longitudinal and requiring more than passing interest to follow, and thus is much better suited to a recorded and streamed internet format.

5. Finally you can get to your rules; if it is a tournament you need to make the rules more limited for the purposes of safety in the opening rounds, and even up to the semi-finals, to reduce injury. You might have to forbid elbows, or sweeps, until the finals as they can easily injure and cause even a winner to drop out after their match is finished for example. Whereas, a league format, where fighters only fight once can allow much more liberal rules as injury does not endanger throwing the whole night into chaos.

However, even then you have to always consider your available resources. If you only have Muay Thai kick-boxers available en masse, then you might have to go with Thai rules because that is who you have available to fight. This is true of what ever format is predominant. If you want a true grab-bag approach that is very style versus style orientated, then you need a rule set which allows all competitors their best weapons, but at the same time you have to avoid boring your audience with tactics which cause unnecessary stoppages. Now you could allow sweeps, but what does the sweep earn the sweeper? Do you have knock-down rules where when you are knocked down X amounts of times then it counts as a TKO? Such a rule could add some exciting tension, but might get some scorn from people who might not view such a point victory as valid in full-contact. Have to keep in mind that you might not please everyone; but that you should consider mass appeal above what you want to see.

Also, speaking of available resources and going back to getting fighters. You could have a team based format where different gyms send representative fighters, and you have both independent fighter championships but also a team league. Good promotion for the gyms, and could help you get fighters on the cheap, but you might end up with amateurs trying to become professionals rather than high-quality established competitors. Really does depend on what you want to do with the fighters; do you want to be creating professionals, or using professionals?

A cage could be both a boon and a bust in kick-boxing. Unlike MMA where one needs the space and the rigidity of a cage wall for grappling, in kick-boxing that extra space can just become space for avoiding fighting, and the rigidity of the cage can prevent one slipping away from being caught when brought to the cage wall and lead to a clinch that goes no where. The ropes of a traditional boxing ring allow fighters more manoeuvrability when caught up against the ropes than a cage wall will, and helps keep the fight mobile. Also, the smaller size of a traditional ring better facilities a striking exchange as the space to avoid said exchange is very restricted. Think Ali’s rope-a-dope strategy, he was still eating punches even though he was basically running the whole fight; it kept it unusual and exciting. That is what you want in a striking exchange; high-intensity and the drama of two fighters trying to knock each other down or out.

Over-all; just avoid gimmicks beyond letting fighters build a persona that your audience want to follow. If the cage is going to be a gimmick, recognise it as a gimmick; but if you can test the theory and keep it interesting than go for it.

All great questions! i'll try to answer them all!

1) Our talent pool is from the start at least, going to be all amatuers. We have a couple of schools in my area with a high emphasis on Muay Thai, so I'd like to adjust the rules to suit the talent pool we have

2) The cage is not set in stone, and personally i'd rather have a ring. The reason for the cage is my partner is a former MMA promoter and he still has his cage. It's basicly a way to save expenses.

3) I'd like to have professionals in time, but I feel that would come with building a reputation and ability to afford pros. I'd like to build this show up, and cater to the fighters as much as possible, but right now, i'd like build amateurs up and establish them. My main purpose is to spread my love of kickboxing to the masses.

[chrissyp]

A title...hhmmm...

How about..."Victory"?? I'm terribly at this!! I do believe that if you had a ONE WORD TITLE, that's easy to remember as well as catchy, it would go along way. Seems like all of the good one are gone!

"Champion"...I don't like that one either.

Man, this is hard!!

I like where you're going. I like the idea of a short, catchy title. ideas i liked right now are "Triumph" or "Triumph fighting championship" I also like "fighting spirit"

All of the good names are gone now...like...Strikeforce. That's a one word catchy title if I've ever seen one before.

On your "Triumph", I'd suggest this..."Triumphant"...it's one word, and boy oh boy, it's kind of catchy too. "Triumph fighting championship" is good too, but for me, it's a mouthful. So, maybe do like Ultimate Fighting Championship has done, and done quite well...

Brand Management!! Ultimate Fighting Championship is a mouthful too, but it has branded UFC as one of the most successful branding managements that the world has ever seen. So, maybe you could brand "Triumph fighting championship" into TFC.

That sounds good to...Triumph / Triumphant FC?