MMA Management 101

I was asked to write a piece on MMA management and felt obligated to do so, you see when I first got in the game it was through necessity.

I was coaching my cousin Troy Kious, as well as 3 other fighters in a Tae Kwon Do school in Oklahoma City Oklahoma. I didn’t know any managers or I would have sought one out and asked for his help, you see I had no clue what I was doing.

I first thought that these guys all needed to be put through the ringer to physically challenge them and once I knew they wouldn’t break I could depend on them to be winners. So I devised a plan to put them through day after day of hell until I thought that most men would break. We went through a month of this and all 4 of them stayed.

I in turn contacted a promoter doing amateur fights in Missouri and made arrangements for us to travel to St. Louis and fight. We trained very hard and I can say that they were in shape for sure and their skills were up to par with the guys we were fighting.

What I didn’t know, and failed to learn for at least another year of matching fights was that experience cannot be replaced by training.

We went 1-2 on that day; one of the original 4 joined the marines right before training camp started. My cousin Troy won his fight by 3rd rd submission and the other guys both lost 1 by submission and the other by TKO. Like I said that I felt like our skills had us in the fights and the experience of the other guys allowed them to win those 2 fights.

I know a lot of guys in the MMA game, and a bunch of those guys don’t have managers. These guys are 50% winners at best. Most of them are taking fights they shouldn’t take, saying the old adage you gotta beat the best if you wanna be the best.

This saying can be and is true after you have the experience to hang in there and have a 50/50 shot at winning, that way you learn from every second you are in the cage/ring. Otherwise you are just taking a beating and padding your opponent’s record.

As a manager I have realized a few things in this game and have made myself kind of a guideline to work with. This set of rules allows me to build a fighter in the early stages of his career and test him when he is close to making the big show and so far has worked for me and my guys.

Remember there is no MMA Management for Dummies book at the Barnes and Noble. No handbook for getting your fighter into the UFC , Bellator, or Strikeforce. So I have devised a plan, and implemented it with my fighters and so far it has been working just as I planned.

* Some of the guys I manage: Jeremy Spoon, John “jc superstar” Cottrell, Terry Acker, Will Thompson and Chad Leonhardt. (My fighters in Bellator have a record of 14-4.)

* MY COMPANY IS ELITE FIGHTER MANAGEMENT BASED IN OKLAHOMA CITY OKLAHOMA.

CALL LARRY AT (405)249-2618 OR I CAN BE FOUND ON FACEBOOK, BY LOOKING UP MY NAME LARRY SROCK OR ELITE FIGHTER MANAGEMENT.

MMA Management 101

Great article and good read!

thanks, if there any hopefull fighters looking for management or prospective managers looking for advice they can email any questions to me at fightmaker71@gmail.com or larry_srock@hotmail.com