Xtreme Fighting Championships is back. The promotion is gearing up for its first event in nearly five years, as XFC 43 is scheduled for Nov. 11 in Atlanta, GA.
The Return of Xtreme Fighting Championships
It’s been a long road back for the Michigan-based promotion. XFC, founded in 2006, built markets in the United States southeast and midwest regions, as well as Brazil. However, Brazil’s 2016 economic collapse caused investors to pull out of the publicly-traded promotion, and XFC hasn’t been able to hold a show since Dec. 5, 2015. That will soon change, as XFC President Myron Molotky has worked to position his organization to return stronger than ever.
“There’s been a lot of strategy placed in getting XFC up and moving again,” Molotky told MMASucka. “Fortunately, things have been going quite well. We’re real excited. I think Nov. 11 is going to be an outstanding event; probably our best ever, and that’s a great way to start.”
Molotky wasn’t able to reveal who will compete on XFC 43 yet, but matchmakers were instructed to put together a card full of bangers from the curtain jerker to the main event.
“What I’m concerned with in the Hexagon is each and every fight, from the first prelim to the main event, is absolutely wild shit,” Molotky said. “Let’s go. The doors close, and it’s just craziness in there … We want to make sure that these fights line up as the most exciting that everyone’s seeing in combat sports.”
A New Business Model
Hardcore MMA fans will see names they’ll recognize on the next card and future XFC showings. Veterans signed to XFC will have great pedigrees in the sport who may have been once-signed to the UFC or Bellator, according to Molotky. However, the promotion will place a lot of emphasis on homegrown talent to meet its tagline, “the next generation of champions.”
XFC will largely follow a three-point business model: its Young Guns series, tournaments, and its Superfight series.
Young Guns will feature fighters who have minimal professional experience or are making their pro-MMA debuts. It will be akin to a developmental league, Molotky said. The promotion’s “young guns” will be developed before they begin to compete in tournaments. Before its hiatus, XFC was known for its 8-man tournaments.
“With those tournaments, we produced a lot of fighters who are doing quite well in the other major promotions in the world,” Molotky said. “It’s very difficult to get through our tournament. That’s just a wicked, wicked tournament where there’s some amazing talent and maybe some fighters who haven’t had a chance to be on a big platform.”
Following each tournament, the promotion will take a close look at the winners and runners-up. Eventually, the most successful fighters will square off in the XFC Superfight series. A self-sustainable roster of homegrown talent is expected to flourish within two to three years’ time, Molotky said.
Title fights aren’t currently in the works, as Molotky wants the XFC belt to mean something.
“We want the belt to really mean something other than saying, ‘Hey, we’re handing out a belt for a job well done in one fight,’” he explained.
The Relaunch
XFC was once a stalwart in the Brazilian market, running all its shows there from February 2014 through its hiatus. However, Molotky said his promotion will refocus its efforts towards the U.S. market with potential forays into Latin America and Europe.
“The first thing we have to do is get our chord down in the U.S.,” he explained. “We’ve had very good success on the regional level when XFC started from 2006 to 2012. We went to Brazil with the idea of going international. We found our success doing that as well. The U.S. is really our target. We really look at the organization very similar to what we’ve had in the past: grassroots strategy but on a global level.”
Brazil’s hosting of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics hurt the country financially, Molotky said. With XFC placing its dependence on the U.S., Molotky said he’s “very confident” in the promotion’s finances going forward.
“This is something that, when you’re on the sidelines for 4-and-a-half to 5 years and having gone through that financial collapse in Brazil, you specifically want to make sure the financial backing is there,” he said. “Let’s face it, especially a relaunch, it’s expensive. You do have revenue streams, but the investor group, and everything going we’ve got going on on the financial end understands that we’re going to spend a lot of money, and we’re going to get this launched the right way.”
XFC Stock And NBC Deal
Following the search process for a new partner, XFC eventually came to terms. Molotky began working with people who took the idea and ran with it to make it a publicly-traded company. The new partnership aligned with XFC’s vision to take a combat sports company and bring it into a public entity, Molotky said.
XFC is a publicly-traded company under the stock ticker $DKMR. While the ticker is over-the-counter and doesn’t reflect the XFC brand, Molotky said the company has plans to move over to NASDAQ and change its ticker to be geared more towards the MMA promotion itself.
XFC 43 will air live on NBC Sports Network on Nov. 11, as the promotion secured a deal to air six through 10 events live in 2021. Molotky called the deal with the broadcaster “huge.”
“I consider it the gold standard. We were approached by broadcasters, and our team also approached many broadcasters trying to find the right fit. NBC Sports was skeptical. They’ve been through it before. They weren’t happy with the results they had before. I think it really came down to mutual trust.”
