EliteXC executive welcomes Florida probe, insists it's a "non-story"
While the thought of a government investigation may concern company executives in a variety of industries, EliteXC Head of Fight Operations Jeremy Lappen welcomes the probe with open arms.
After all, as Lappen recently told MMAjunkie.com (
www.mmajunkie.com), he's got nothing to hide.
"It's not a concern at all," Lappen said of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation's impending investigation. "In fact we're glad that they're doing that.
"Because now they can do their investigation. They can check all the facts and then report that nothing happened. Then hopefully that just puts the story to bed. I'm glad that they're doing the investigation."
The cause of the investigation is a perceived attempt by EliteXC officials to affect the outcome of the Oct. 4 main event bout of "EliteXC: Heat" between eventual victor Seth Petruzelli and company star Kevin "Kimbo Slice" Ferguson.
The controversy began after Petruzelli appeared on "The Monsters in Orlando" show on 104.1 FM in Orlando the Monday after the bout.
"The promoters kind of hinted to me and they gave me the money to stand and trade with him," Petruzelli said on the morning radio show. "They didn't want me to take him down, let's just put it that way. It was worth my while to try to stand up and punch with him."
Petruzelli would later retract his statement, and Lappen insists there was no reason for the organization to ask Petruzelli to work exclusively from his feet.
"To me there is no controversy," Lappen said. "There's no story. And it's frustrating because the media is blowing it up, when Seth Petruzelli said that nothing happened. It didn't happen.
"I know he made the unfortunate comments to begin with, but then he said, 'No, I misstated myself. Nothing happened.' I've gone on record and said nothing happened. We did not tell him to stand.
"Again, Kimbo was training for somebody who was better on the ground than Seth Petruzelli, and he had trained for months for that. Why would we ever [try to keep the fight from going to the ground]?"
As the full saga has unfolded over the past seven days, Lappen's own comments have also come into question.
While trying to explain EliteXC's bonus policies to various media outlets, Lappen was quoted as seemingly contradicting himself regarding the bonuses available to his fighters.
Josh Gross of SI.com quoted Lappen claiming that EliteXC does not issue submission bonuses for their cards, while Franklin McNeil of ESPN.com quoted the executive as having offered Petruzelli a knockout bonus, submission bonus and "fight of the night" bonus.
Lappen told MMAjunkie.com that both reports were false.
"It's funny because I got misquoted in both interviews," Lappen said. "Josh Gross quoted me in saying that we never give submission bonuses. And I didn't say that. We do give submission bonuses, but it's not that often.
"We give knockout bonuses much more often than we do submission bonuses. But we have given them before. And then Franklin McNeil had a quote for me, and I called him and told him when I saw it -- because actually Josh called me and said, 'Hey, what's going on. You said this thing to me.' And I was like, 'What?' And [Gross] said, 'Yeah, look -- this is what Franklin McNeil said.' So I called Franklin because I did not say that.
"We gave, and I've been pretty clear -- I think -- in my interviews before that, that we gave Seth Petruzelli a knockout bonus. We didn't give him a submission of the night bonus. We didn't give him a 'fight of the night bonus,' or anything like that. I'm not really sure where that came from. I told Franklin, he said he taped the interview. I said, 'Well go back and listen to it, because I didn't say that. I would not have said that, because I know what we gave [Petruzelli].'"
Some of the confusion from the situation seems to lie in the method with which EliteXC offers bonuses. Contrary to the more well-known method of knockout, submission or fight "of the night" bonuses common in the UFC -- and in an attempt to eliminate the "locker-room bonuses" also prevalent in the Zuffa-owned organization -- EliteXC negotiates bonus potentials into individual contracts.
"We gave [Petruzelli], and I've been pretty clear every time I've been interviewed, we gave him a knockout bonus," Lappen explained. "And it wasn't 'of the night,' or anything like that. It was before the fight. We gave him a knockout bonus as part of the deal.
"That's what we do. In our contracts, I'd say a number of our fighters -- maybe one-third of the fighters, or half of the fighters -- get knockout bonuses in their contracts.
"Ahead of time they're told that if they get a knockout, they'll get the money afterward. It's a pretty common thing in the industry. A lot of companies give knockout bonuses."
Lappen also insisted that despite the possibility of a knockout bonus being placed in a contract -- and without adding in a clause for a submission -- the organization was not trying to dictate that the action be contested on the fighters' feet.
"You can knock somebody out on the ground," Lappen explained. "It's a TKO or a KO.
"Actually in this sport they don't have knockouts because there's no 10-count. Pretty much everything is kind of a TKO. You can just as easily take someone down and pound them out. You could be stomping them with elbows. That's a knockout.
"So it has nothing to do with standing or on the ground. Really for us, it's just an incentive to be exciting. We want people going into action-packed fights. That's it. It has nothing to do with standing, it has nothing to do with the ground."
While Lappen is open to discussing the matter, and feels his company has nothing to hide, the executive only wishes the focus could be shifted away from a perceived negative point to the success of the evening.
"The real story is the ratings we did and how great of a show it was," Lappen said. "I mean that is a huge story. For MMA to go against college football -- big college football -- and Major League Baseball playoffs with two teams from major markets, and beat it. To be No. 1 in the night in all key demographics that the advertisers care about, that's huge. And the UFC counter-programmed against it, which meant nothing. That's a great statement for the sport."
Lappen hopes the Florida probe into his company's operations will clear EliteXC's name of any perceived operational improprieties -- and shift the focus to the momentum the organization has built with its past three shows.
"I think we've been pretty clear," Lappen said of the situation. "To me there's no story. It didn't happen. Let's focus on the real stories of the night."
. The Company advised CBS that it was unable to deliver the Sunrise Event ordered by CBS for October 2008 under the current terms of the Agreement.
