Public Enemy #1: Zuffa and Dana White Can’t Paint Agent Ken Pavia Into a Corner (EXCLUSIVE)

Posted on | August 31, 2011 | No Comments

MMA Agents Owner Ken Pavia

There was a time not so long ago when Mixed Martial Arts Agent Ken Pavia was considered a true golden boy in his field. A gentlemen among thieves and vultures, he built the kind of personal relationships with his clients no other agent entrenched in the sport could claim to covet. Foregoing contract negotiations in more lucrative sports like hockey and baseball to focus exclusively on mixed martial arts, it was Pavia’s relentless and tireless hard work that created his eventual rise to fame and set him apart from his colleagues. He earned a great reputation in the rough and tumble world of MMA as a guy who would really fight for his fighters. It was no surprise when a January, 2007 Sherdog article dubbed him “The Jerry Maguire of Mixed Martial Arts.”

Unfortunately for Pavia he would have no “who’s coming with me” moment when reality came crashing down on him in late 2010 after the most powerful and popular MMA league sued him for consorting with the enemy.

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Zuffa, LLC (The parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championships) and their president Dana White decided to tear off his angel wings and make him the Pavmanian Devil. Google his name these days and you’ll encounter page after page of news about the lawsuit against him and Bellator Fighting Championships for a variety of trumped-up charges.

The 44-year-old self-made phenom suddenly faces an epic, slow-motion fall from grace. Pavia’s first attorneys mounted a half-hearted defense and tapped much of his financial resources only to bow out in the early stages due to a conflict of interest that came out of nowhere. Dana White passed down a decree mandating no Zuffa employee could even contact Pavia. He managed to hold on to just a handful of loyal Zuffa fighters who were willing to hang tight and deal with the complicated nuances of going around him to get deals done. Joe Silva, once a trusted friend and associate of Pavia’s, refused to run afoul of White’s instructions for fear of losing his matchmaking job with the UFC. He cut all ties with Pavia. White still wasn’t satisfied after taking so many steps to ostracize Pavia from the Zuffa club. He told Pavia personally that he wouldn’t stop until Pavia lost everything and killed himself, exhibiting how harsh Dana White can get when he’s angry. Eventually all the blacklisting efforts and legal wrangling would force Pavia to seriously consider selling the agency he built from the ground up.

Contrary to popular belief, though, there is life outside of Zuffa for a hard-charging, globe-trotting guy like Ken Pavia.

Responding in the comment section of an article focusing solely on his “cryptic” response to the lawsuit, Pavia wrote, “My shifted business focus has taken me to Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, and Atlantic City all within the last 5 weeks, so I have stayed busy.” For a guy who really lives and breathes MMA, it won’t be easy for Pavia to let go of his love of the game. He even drew blood training in the sport with some of his fighters in his earlier days, though he insists he’s “retired” now. Looking back at how far he’s come since getting out of law school a little more than two decades ago, it’s hard to believe Pavia will give up the fight completely, though. It’s even harder to believe that a former boxercise instructor like Dana White has a better reputation in the sport of MMA than a guy who’s literally shed the real blood, sweat and tears to earn the loyalty of his clients all across the world. Where White relies on power and money (and his rich casino baron friends) to wield an iron fist in the industry, Pavia’s greatest strength is his passion. Where fighters fear White, they respect Pavia.

For many of the mainstream MMA media, it’s hard to draw the line between what’s good business sense executed by White and the Zuffa brass and what’s outright spoiled brat temper tantrum antics. Are they protecting the brand or taking their ball and going home with it like they own the entire mixed martial arts landscape and nobody can fight in a cage without their aproval? In many cases, if you come down on the wrong side of their version of the truth, you’re up blacklist creek without a paddle. If you don’t see Zuffa’s world through their rose-colored glasses, you don’t get to see their world at all. The most critical reporting and exposing of the sordid truth behind how Zuffa really operates can mean the writer may never enjoy the courtesy of a UFC or Strikeforce press pass ever again.

Even the fighters are often intimidated to the point of waiting until the cameras stop rolling to really speak their minds. In the off-the-record words of one Strikeforce fighter I spoke to before the Zuffa buyout, “They [the UFC] like to keep you under their thumb.” If it’s not the fear of being thrown out and going back to the smaller leagues that motivates Zuffa fighters it’s the allure of so-called “locker room bonuses” and the struggle to gain enough momentum to earn a title tilt.

Perhaps nobody outside the inner Zuffa circle understands how things really work in Zuffaland as much as Ken Pavia, and for that reason they simply had to excise him from the league like a malignant tumor. He became the man who knew too much, and he paid the price for putting the sport in a more big picture light and deciding to share with the competition rather than shun it.

Pavia, who graduated from UCLA in 1989 and Miami School of Law in 1991, still has 57 clients, including 2 former Zuffa world champions. In 2010 his fighters participated in 122 fights in 36 organizations in 12 countries. Though it’s been a difficult struggle for him to weather the storm of the Zuffa lawsuit, Pavia is not giving up. He’s built the kind of worldwide bridges that can’t be burned by the relentless attack coming from Zuffa’s hired legal guns.

The main problem with Zuffa’s attempt to oust Pavia is that he’s not about to go away quietly. At some point all the blowhard attitude and misplaced animosity White can muster just isn’t going to be enough to win the day. Pavia’s gathered some incredible intelligence over his career that could be very damaging to Zuffa’s reputation if he ever decided to reveal the bulk of his secrets. One of these days Dana White’s going to end up shitting on the wrong doorstep and biting the wrong hand that feeds him. Ken Pavia just might be the guy who goes out with a bang and beats White at his own game, riding off into the sunset after making Zuffa choke on its Big League Chew.

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