Monte Cox, former CEO of M-1 Global and agent to many of the top MMA fighters in the world, has recently been criticized for his poor business decision of moving to M-1 Global to help propel the new promotion to new heights in its infancy. Understandably, fans have jumped on Cox's past quotes that gave M-1 Global an optimistic outlook in the MMA scene. Monte answered back in an interview with Brawl Sports:
"I'm the CEO, so I'm going to make the matches. Well, they wanted a say. They wanted to be able to say, `we don't like that match ... we want to do something else.' ... I couldn't make money with him. There was just no way we could make money with that kind of overhead. That became apparent. To take all of our investors' money and put it around Fedor, it just didn't make business sense.... I think people understand that I tried everything possible to make this happen. In business, sometimes it just doesn't work. We bounced back, I think, very well. Getting Tim Sylvia is a huge coup for us. Without him, what would we have? We locked onto him. We locked onto Rothwell. Now, I actually feel better about where we're headed than I did before. I would trade Fedor for Rothwell and Sylvia every day."
It's interesting that Monte stuck around for so long when he didn't have power over the matchups like he had hoped, and the initial investment from the investors and many people involved was all banking on Fedor, an unproven draw in the United States in pay-per-view and live gate numbers. It was unrealistic to believe that M-1 Global would push the envelope on breaking a record in live gate and PPV numbers, but that was likely to be what kind of numbers they would have had to produce to gain a profit. It was some bad reasoning by Sibling Sports and Monte Cox, but they are now on the road to potentially making some sort of effort at becoming a long-term MMA promotion.
The one thing that still remains a huge likability factor for me when it comes to Monte Cox is the fact that he still remains adamant that quality overpowers entertainment value when it comes to MMA. Although I agree with him to an extent, entertainment does factor into some MMA bouts, specifically matchups in Japan. In the United States however, the higher drawing cards have mainly been quality matchups with the added bonus of both fighters hyping the bouts enough to produce big numbers. I hope Monte can eventually produce these types of fights for fans who appreciate the quality matchups, and it'll be interesting to see what he can do with a higher profile stable of fighters. Either way, keep an eye on Adrenaline MMA... maybe they can surprise us with some great matchups that actually appeal to the hardcore fans out there.