I had the opportunity to speak with new IFL president and COO Jay Larkin a few weeks ago and a transcript of that conversation can be found on CBSSports.com. However, I also had a chance to ask Larkin additional questions and I can now make the transcript of that question and answer session available here on ProElite.com.

Sam Caplan: You make a valid point in that major MMA promotions simply don't come out of the gate making money. The question that others and I have is whether the IFL has the "war chest" to continue to sustain the current losses?

Jay Larkin: First of all, not only MMA, but no sport ever has come out of the box fully formed and making a profit.

Now, do we have the resources to continue? If I didn't believe we had those resources I wouldn't have come on. The first thing that has to happen is that we have to get over our growing pains and there are a lot of cost saving and expense reducing moves that we can take right away -- and that's what I'm taking now -- to get us out of that initial growth stage and get us into an operational stage.

I do believe that once those changes are made we're going to be a lot more mobile in what we can do and a lot more aggressive. At the same time, we're always raising capital and we're always looking at new investments and new partners.

Again, this is really an amazing success story. I've come in here and seen what these guys have accomplished in a year and a half and it's a brand new market. This isn't even an established sport. It's a brand new sport and a brand market and to get as far as they have is extraordinary.

Sam Caplan: You've made mention of some of the cuts that you've made and will make, can you talk specifically about some of the areas that have been addressed and will be in the future?

Jay Larkin: The cuts have mainly been adminstrative and operational and it's not anything that the fan would ever see. It's just internal things such as how much we pay for our phone service or how much we pay for our rent and how much we pay for our coffee cups. It's literally logistics and with any business, not a sport business or MMA business in particular, there are specific startup costs in opening up an office. I just had three guys in my office all day setting up my computer. That's an expense.

All those things are being looked at. The size of our staff is pretty paired down as it is right now. We're not looking at major staff cuts but we're looking at ways to save money on the day-to-day operations of the IFL as a business.

Sam Caplan: Kurt Otto said during a conference call several weeks ago that the IFL needs to do live TV to remain competitive. What happens if the ratings on November 8 for the first stage of the World Grand Prix are less than stellar and live TV is an option that's not on the table going into 2008 as a result?

Jay Larkin: That's something we'll have to address if it happens. It hasn't happened yet so I can't speculate on it. However, coming from the world that I come from, which is premium television, I learned a long time ago that ratings are not a reliable meter of success. It's one of many meters of success but not neccessarily the only one.

I'm not too concerned about ratings. Certainly are ratings are doing appropriate numbers for what MyNetwork and FSN are accostomed to. We've become one of the main shows and one of the keystone shows on MyNetwork (and) that's certainly encouraging. Also, MyNetwork has been selling the advertising on the live show and they've been doing it with great success. So that's also another very strong indicator of optimism.

So I'm not going to worry about what may or may not happen until it happens. What happens if you go into an arena and a tree falls on it and takes out the power? Anything can happen. Tomorrow's worries will take care of themself. (Laughs) I've got enough on my plate today.

Sam Caplan: Kurt wouldn't give details about what matches would be featured on the first live telecast, but is it safe to assume fight fans are guaranteed to see the rematch between Chris Horodecki and Bart Palaszewski?

Jay Larkin: Yeah, I think that's a safe assumption. I think you're going to be looking at the best matchups of the whole year. That's an interesting thing and it brings us to a subject that I'm fascinated by. When I first came onboard here and first heard about it, I was reluctant to embrace the product because of the team concept.

I wasn't sure whether the team concept would work and I've now heard a lot of critcism in the marketplace about the team concept from our friends out there in the MMA world. Now that I've come to understand it better and I've seen it in action, I think it's sublime. It's simplicity is wonderful.

I'll tell you what, having spent so many years in boxing and seeing so many mis-matches and so many political shenanigans and manufactured mandatories -- you've got world class champions finally totally unheard of fighters that are mandatory for some strange backroom reason that's left unexplained to the world -- with the team concept it dawned on me that all your so-called mandatories, so-called title challenges, are earned or legitimate because the guys who are facing off for the titles have worked their way through the teams. They've worked their way by fighting the best opposition and winning and moving up in the rankings to earn their title shot. So in effect we're creating an internal ranking system that's untouched by politics and the machinations of managers and promoters and things like that. So it's really the fascinating way to eliminate what I think is one of the biggest problems in boxing, which is the bullshit mandatory.

So I'm starting to like this and I'm starting to look at the teams as this wonderful talent pool where the guys get to test themselves and earn those title shots.

Sam Caplan: I wanted to ask you about boxing because you have such a long history with you. You've touched on all the politicals and alluded to some of the ways in which boxing has shot itself in the foot. There's critics out there that say boxing is dead. Do you feel that there's any chance that boxing can return to its former levels of popularity?

Jay Larkin: No. I don't think it can ever return to its former levels of popularity because the world has changed in so many ways. You talk about the glory years of boxing and you're talking about the 30's, 40's, and 50's and then the renaniassnce of the late-70's and 80's when you had amazing activity from lightweight to middleweight with the Ray Leonards of the world, Tommy Hearns, Marvin Haglers, (Roberto) Durans, that was a brilliant renaniassance of boxing.

There are many reasons why boxing is no longer anywhere near the popular mainstream sport that it was. Part of that reason was the unavailablity to broadcast on network television, the price of the fight, so many fights migrating moving to pay-per-view, and there are a lot of reasons why. The fanbase has also changed and the demographic has aged for boxing.

In short, I don't think boxing can ever be what it was but I do believe it can be a very healthy sport. I think the reports of boxing's demise have been greatly exaggerated. A lot of people are making a lot of money in boxing. I'm not just talking about the aberrations of a De La Hoya/Mayweather. There are a lot of guys fighting and there's a lot of TV coverage, albeit not network (as) the TV coverage is primarily basic cable, premium cable, and pay-per-view. Now, if boxing were suddenly to come back to NBC or ABC or CBS, you would see a huge uptick in the popularity of boxing.

Also, boxing has a lot to do with socio-economics and the fighters. Don't forget in the 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, even 70's, talented African-American athletes had very limited choices. You became a fighter. Very few were lucky enough to get into the NFL and the NBA. Thankfully, that's changed a great deal and more and more kids in the inner cities are going to college, which wasn't the case in the glory years of boxing when boxing was a way out of the ghetto. Boxing was a way of survival. So a lot of those talented guys who could be the great heavyweights of our era, who could be the Muhammad Alis and the Joe Fraziers of our era, have decided very intelligently not to get their heads beaten in for a living and have gone to college and gone on to careers outside of sports. They've gone on to careers in law, medicine, and every possible field of endeavor that you could imagine whereas 30 years ago, 20 years ago their choices were a lot more limited.

The fighters we're seeing now, there's been a huge influx of Latinos and now we're seeing a tremendous influx of Eastern Europeans. Boxing has traditionaly followed socio-economic trends of the world. There was the great Irish period of boxing when you had Irish immigrants coming over here by the boatload looking for a better life. Then they were followed by the Jewish and Italian fighters who were doing the same thing. Then they were followed by the African-Americans coming up from the south. Now you're looking at Latinos and Eastern Europeans. Boxing is a sport probably more than any other sport that is tied into the socio-economics of a society.

Sam Caplan: I don't mean to get off the subject but hearing you talk about boxing is fascinating. I was a big fan growing up and remember that my first exposure to it was on network television. It seemed like boxing was on CBS and ABC every other weekend. Why hasn't anyone in the boxing community tried to make that push to get back on free TV? I look at a fight like Kelly Pavlik vs. Jermain Taylor; Taylor doesn't have the most exciting fighting style but Pavlik is a brawler and seems like a guy that could be a crowd favorite but the mainstream doesn't know about him. Would it kill boxing to try and go to a major network and say "Hey, we're going to give you this match for free in order to try and build some new stars and bring in some new fans and try to appeal to a younger audience."

Jay Larkin: Well, that's a great point of view and I can assure you that every promoter I know has tried to do that. And you're right; you use a good example, Taylor/Pavlik would have been a great ABC fight in its day. But the networks don't want boxing to touch their ad pool. They have a specific amount of money that they apply to different events, whether it's MLB, NBA, or whatever it may be, they put the money towards those events. One of the reasons is because boxing is unreliable. You don't know whether you're getting 12 rounds or 30 seconds of one round and they have to make good on those commercial commitments to the sponsors whether they have one round or 12 rounds. So it's unreliable and television networks don't like unreliability. They want to know how long a show is going to run. They know how many quarters a football game has and they know how many innings a baseball game has. Boxing is too indefinite for them and they don't like it for that reason.

Also, boxing has had its scandals and a lot of them don't want to be touched by scandal. There's a lot of reasons why the networks shy away from it. Now, any of the networks, and most of the networks I know, would be happy to carry boxing as a time buy. Meaning that the promoter would buy the actual hour and a half or two hours on that network and then try to make their money back by selling sponsorship. But they don't want to go into their pool and spend the money on boxing. So even if you go to NBC, ABC, or CBS and offer them Taylor vs. Pavlik for free, odds are they're not going to take it. They're not going to displace something else for it.

Sam Caplan: One of the things that Kurt and Gareb have talked about in regard to the IFL is the purity of their brand in the way they present MMA as a sport as opposed to something else. The ground style is a big part of MMA and now you're talking a little bit about looking more at a way to make fighters fasted paced and make them a little more exciting. What if you have a guy who is a world class Jiu-Jitsu practitioner or has a tremendous wrestling background and has a style that's both effective and successful but that's boring to watch. What becomes of that fighter?

Jay Larkin: That fighter will be incented and encouraged to have more of a standing game or in regard to the grappling, he shouldn't be penalized for his discipline (but he) should find a way to make that floor game faster moving. We had an event in Florida and Renzo's (Gracie) guys, who are the ultimate Jiu-Jitsu grapplers, they stood and fought all night. They had standing games all night. We're going to find a way to let these guys know that they're going to be rewarded for having an exciting fight.

Let me be clear: I don't want to say we're going to discourage them from their strengths or penalize them in any way for their strengths. We're just going to encourage them to be more active and (make for) better television. Now, at the end of the day it is a sport and we want to protect the integrity of that sport so we're not going to turn it into a spectacle and we're not going to turn it into some WWE fight by any means. We want our fighters to be well-rounded fighters. We want the trainers (and) the coaches to know that they've got to teach these guys along with grappling to teach them to also strike. We want to have fully rounded mixed martial artists.

As you point out it's mixed martial arts. It's not Jiu-Jitsu. It's not boxing. It's not Taekwondo. It's mixed martial arts. We want to have the most well-rounded fighters we can possibly find in the vast talent pool that's out there and we want our managers and trainers and our coaches to know that if these guys are exciting, they are going to get a lot more coverage.

Sam Caplan: With so many promotions out there you've got to be concerned that other companies are going to make strong bids for your top fighters. How do you plan to combat that?

Jay Larkin: Well you know what? That's inherent in any business and I'm not entirely opposed to that. And certainly if the IFL has made an investment in building and creating talent then we want to be somewhat proprietary. But I'm also a big believer in a strong tide rising all boats. If you get a Ben Rothwell and he's clearing out the heavyweight division then sooner or later he's going to have to fight somebody else's heavyweights. And the same thing with Chris.

I'm not entirely opposed to seeing our guys fighting elsewhere. What I would not like is to see our guys become fodder for a part of a machine that chews up fighters and that when they lose they get dumped. We do feel our guys are among the most well-rounded mixed martial artists out there. I want to see our guys become so dominant that it won't bother us to see them go across the street, wherever that may be, and knock the stuffing out of something else.

Sam Caplan: You had such a long affiliation with Showtime but were a victims of cutbacks in 2005. They are trying to expand their audience through MMA. During your tenure with Showtime, did you consider televising MMA?

Jay Larkin: Yes.

Sam Caplan: Did you have talks with the UFC or any other existing promotions out there?

Jay Larkin: We had talks with several people about doing MMA. There were reasons that were specific and legitimate as to why we did not and those reasons were the climate of the time regarding violence on television. The cable operators had a very strong aversion to MMA and those meetings that I were involved in were a long time ago; they weren't in 2004 or 2005. They were before the emergence of the UFC as a force on television. I'm talking about the late '90's or the early 2000's when this was really considered to be a bit of a rogue sport. Remember, when the UFC was bought by its current owners, it was a much more violent event before they changed the rules. They couldn't get pay-per-view; they couldn't get television and no one would accept it on their air. They realized that and made appropriate changes and they should be applauded for the inroads that they've made for MMA as a mainstream sport. There are things about it that were changed to make it much more acceptable to the television community.

When I first looked at MMA years ago with Showtime, we couldn't put that on the air and we wouldn't put that on the air. We would have had a lot of very angry affiliates. We would have had a lot of trouble in Washington (D.C.). So the decisions were made not to put MMA on in those years but the environment has changed, the world has changed, the climate has changed, and the sport has changed.

Sam Caplan: What's your assessment of Showtime's MMA coverage thus far?

Jay Larkin: I think that they are finding their way and each show that I've seen has gotten better. I think that they are very much, like we are, a work in progress. And I'm speaking more of Elite(XC) than I am of Showtime because Showtime is not an MMA organization. But they're a work in progress and Showtime's coverage of Elite has gotten progressively better with each show that I've seen. Coming out of the box I was not very impressed with it but it's gotten better and better. And I think they should be supported because as I've said before and I'll say over and over again, a strong tide rises all boats. If Elite does well on Showtime then that's good for MMA as a sport so I will never go on the record to criticize a colleague or a competitor unless they've done something to attack us.

--

Sam Caplan

Lead Writer/Editor - ProElite.com

SamCaplan.ProElite.com