PROELITE PRESIDENT KELLY PERDEW MAKING BIG MOVES
Posted on | April 20, 2007 | No Comments
PROELITE.COM’S KELLY PERDEW COMMENTS ON THE ROLE HIS SITE IS PLAYING IN THE PROMOTION OF THE SPORT OF MIXED MARTIAL ARTS.
By: Rich Bergeron
Kelly Perdew, the President of ProElite.com, has had a busy week. Getting the word out about the first MMA doubleheader in IPPV history has been taking up a great deal of his focus, but this week he also managed to work out a deal to partner with www.mmamix.com, one of the most premiere communities for MMA fighters, fans, and organizations. The MyMMASpace concept will now be absorbed into the ProElite.com interface over the next few weeks. While you wait and watch the site grow you can watch two stellar fight cards for free this Saturday in a monumental broadcast.
“We are definitely staying busy,” said Perdew in a recent interview. “It’s exciting. We’re trying to provide the sport as much support as we can.”
He announced that it will be the first time ever that two shows including 21 free fights will be available in a live broadcast in one day, from two continents. “Not a lot of people have a lot of money to go fly to London,” he said. “Bob Sapp ended up backing out, but we got Tank Abbot in his stead. We’ll have Vitor Belfort, Paul Daley, and a bunch of really exciting fighters. It’s all starting at 10 AM on the West Coast, and you can see it all on proelite.com and watch all thirteen of those fights from London in the Cage Rage event. Then at 7pm on the West Coast in Orange County, there’s a No Limits MMA show with 8 fights on that one.”
Perdew remains committed to the fans of the sport. He said he is just fulfilling the company’s mission to help provide the growth the sport needs. “We want to give the fighters as much exposure as possible, and a lot of times people never get to see live fights. They have to pay $39.99 typically on Pay Per View, and we’re bringing it to people live for free. It’s excellent from a sponsorship and advertising model,” said Perdew. “They just have to be logged on to ProElite.com a half hour before the fight to watch the stream. While the fight is going on they can interact with other members and vote on what’s going on. We’re even doing a ring girl contest. Registration goes on through the end of April. Users on Pro Elite can pick a girl to be on the next Showtime Event.”
The ProElite.com focus is on a fully connected community involving multiple different facets of the sport. “We’re very focused on doing a full community for MMA,” said Perdew. “We want to attract fans, fighters, promoters, everything from the gyms and the clubs, and we also want to be a tool for those different people to interact. Whatever they need proelite.com should be able to provide it. We want to be the MySpace or YouTube of MMA, and that’s the kind of stuff that we’re providing.”
As a result of their push for MMA community supremacy, they recently picked up MMAMIX.COM, which is also known as MYMMASpace. “They have a great team, and they’re run by some really bright people who have been in the sport for a long time,” Perdew said. “The fans have been on there, and we are thinking about how we can combine everything into one community and make sure we can get the best from each of the different groups. Over the coming weeks, we’ll merge them together at the same time, and then we’ll have all the new features together at each spot. Real excited to have Jeremy Gocke and the other founders brought into the fold of Pro Elite, and it will be a great value for both of us.”
As far as anything down the pipeline, that information is strictly classified for the moment. Perdew pointed out that ProElite is a publicly traded company, he “can’t comment on future deals” until they’re made. He did promise some big developments, though.
“I do believe that anytime you want to grow a new business, you need to be able to provide the best quality content, the best quality tools. Fighters need sponsors, and they need to get into fights, and we allow them to find sponsors, show off what they can do, provide examples of their fights, interviews, records, and other material that goes into that,” Perdew explained. “In the days before the internet was so accessible, for a fighter to try to get a promoter or a manager, he has to Fed-Ex a DVD and then hope the person watches it and remembers to call back. Now a fighter can come on ProElite.com, build a site, upload videos: all for free, and they can show their track records, tell their stories, and get promoters and managers.”
Pro Elite is designed to help fighters further their careers with a simple interface. “If you are an up and coming fighter, and you don’t have the resources to build your own Web-site, we provide that for you,” Perdew said. “That increases your likelihood of finding a manager, and maybe you’ll get into Showtime and Elite XC through us, or you could make it to the UFC. We’re really all about providing these resources and tools for people in the sport.”
Perdew knows about communities, having once led the way at ETeamz, the largest amateur sports portal online with over 3.1 million teams registered. He learned from that position that part of the process involves always trying to build new tools and finding out the things that work, and the things that don’t work. “In two weeks time at ProElite.com we’ll have a whole bunch of new features,” he promised. “It’s all gonna become a lot easier to use. We haven’t been at it that long, yet, but in 80 days we’ve streamed four live events, and we had a great show with ICON, we had Frank Triggg and Robbie Lawler, and every day things get better.”
Getting exposure on ProElite.com literally depends on how much time you spend trying to get it. There is a ranking system driven by an algorithm, so it depends on how many people look at your site and put you on their “hitlist,” how many messages you send, and other factors. “It will become much more transparent over time, but it’s really based on how much you use the site and look at your page, and the more photos you have the more page views you’ll get,” he said. “You also get credit if you send out private messages. We’re going to be trying more things to let users know how they can move up in rank.”
Right now Gina Carrano and Julie Kedzie remain in prime slots in the top ten for female fighters on the site. The buzz generated after their fight can still be heard in MMA circles as many viewers agree it was by far the best match on the card. “They had a great fight on Showtime,” said Perdew. “They had standing ovations.”
Tickets go on sale April 21 for the next show that will be televised on Showtime on June 22. Frank Shamrock will be making another appearance against “New York Badass” Phil Baroni. “It’s something Elite Extreme Combat is doing with Strikeforce, and it’s a very exciting event,” promised Perdew. “The full card will be announced tomorrow, and there’s stuff on there already on eleitexc.com, and we’ll be doing commercials and promoting that as well.”
ProElite.com intends to continue to offer useful marketing tools to the MMA community, empower the fighters and the fan base, and keep everything in a cycle of constant improvement. In order to do all that, Perdew knows he has to depend on user feedback. “We want to hear from all your readers. Just go to http://kellyperdew.proelite.com/ to send me a comment. Tell us the things you want to see, what you think about the different tools, and the stuff you like. We will be responsive. This web-site is for the community,” Perdew said.
The future brings good tidings according to the president, and he said he will have some important announcements to make on Monday and Tuesday.
As far as the current trend in MMA and the natural growth going on in the sport, Perdew is ecstatic to see it. “I’m super excited about it and my hat’s off to Dana White and the UFC for really bringing it more mainstream,” he said. “The Ultimate Fighter was really a tipping point to getting it into the mainstream. All this stuff, it puts the focus on the fighter, and these men and women are true warriors, and they’re putting together exciting fights. It’s like watching a chess match with your body. Each side is strategically thinking what to do against their opponent. It’s just so visceral to watch people go into the ring or the cage or the arena, like it has been since the beginning of time, it’s so exciting. People watching automatically start thinking ‘what would I do, how would I hold up?’ There’s been a significant amount of draws, and you really find out what people are made of. I’m just excited, and I think we’re still on the front edge of this wave. Over the next two years we’ll see the full explosion of MMA happen.”
Perdew has always been a fan of all things fighting. As an Airborne Ranger and military intelligence officer, he’s well-schooled himself in hand to hand combat. He also took Judo as a youngster and had to learn how to both wrestle and box at West Point. Though he never practiced MMA in particular, he does appreciate the “discipline and self confidence” fighters exude. “It definitely keeps you in great shape,” he said. “I just admire the guys still fighting who have been there since the beginning. Guys like Dan Severn. I’ve watched from the beginning, and I hooked on then as a fan. I didn’t watch it for a while, but the Ultimate Fighter got me kind of looking at again.”
Perdew has high hopes for the future and maintains he has a great model for the business. “We’ve got a great business team and so many entrepreneurs here, and we’re just trying to find out how do we help the sport and grow it. We just want to figure out a way to make a social network that helps all the people in the community,” he said. “We appreciate you putting the word out. We invite everybody to register Saturday, and we want to remind everyone to make sure you register at least 30 minutes before the fight, and we hope everyone enjoys the shows and everyone tells their friends about it. Again, just let me know if there’s something you wanna see, read, or hear about, or any new function you think might be good for the site, whether you’re a fan, fighter, or promoter.”