Q-C's Cox becomes major player in mixed martial arts
His dinner with Mark Cuban was just the tip of the iceberg.
In the past whirlwind week alone, Bettendorf’s Monte Cox has broken bread with the maverick Dallas Mavericks’ owner, participated in another dinner check totalling $4,600, jetted from Amsterdam to Frankfurt to New York City, and been courted by representatives of cable TV giants Showtime, HBO and HDNet.
Monday, he sat for interviews with the Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated and ESPN the Magazine and even chatted by phone with the newspaper for which he once was sports editor, the Quad-City Times.
After that, Cox stood in front of a news conference in New York attended by 150 news organizations. That’s where he was introduced as president and CEO of M1 Global, a new and significant player in the fast-growing world of mixed martial arts.
“It has just been amazing,’’ the 47-year-old father of three said of what has transpired since he was contacted 10 weeks ago by representatives of Sibling Entertainment Group, Inc., a New York-based entertainment industry conglomerate looking to make a new big-footed footprint in MMA.
Cox, who has promoted more than 400 MMA shows while representing hundreds of fighters out of his Bettendorf home over the past 12 years, immediately becomes one of the increasingly popular sport’s most influential players.
Cox said there currently are 150 MMA organizations in the United States, including the acknowledged industry leader, the Ultimate Fighting Championship. There are another 100 such organizations across the globe, including Japan-based PRIDE.
With a $200 million start-up budget and a contract with sports marketing industry giant SFX Media and Sports, Cox said M1 Global will challenge the biggest of those groups.“When we get a TV deal, we’re No. 2 in the United States,” Cox declared.
Cox said M1 Global already has signed free-agent Russian heavyweight Fedor Emelianenko to lead a stable of fighters it will build and employ in as many as eight shows in the coming year, three to four of those big-level U.S. events.
The first of those is expected to take place in February, possibly in Chicago, but Cox said a firm date and place won’t be established until after he and M1 Global reach a network and pay-per-view TV agreement, likely with one of the aforementioned cable television giants, HBO, Showtime and/or Cuban’s growing HDNet.
M1 Global will have offices in Holland, Russia and Japan as well as the United States, and will stage shows in Europes and elsewhere.
“We truly are global,” said Cox.
Sibling Sports initially asked Cox to lead its efforts to procure U.S.-based fighting talent, but as talks continued, the job description grew.
“I was blown away,’’ Cox said. “I have done everything you can do in Mixed Martial Arts. This was a chance to do something on a grand scale.’’
Cox plans to continue to make his home in Bettendorf with his wife, Missy, and children Paige, Sydney and Matthew.
“I will be a lot like I am now — I’ll fly a lot,” he said.
Although the majority of his promotions have been in Iowa and at least a dozen of the 50 fighters he has represented are based in the Quad-Cities, Cox has been logging frequent flier miles virtually from the moment he left the Times to enter the world of MMA more than a decade ago.
He became interested in what was then a niche sport a few years earlier while covering an event featuring fellow Bettendorf resident and now former UFC champion Pat Miletich.
Since then, Cox has had a front-row seat to the sport’s amazing growth.
Now, he’s at the top of the game.
“I get to do something I really, really like and now, it has become financially rewarding,” he said.
How rewarding?
“I hate to say,” he said of his three-year contract for unspecified millions. “Honestly, it is embarassing.”
Craig DeVrieze can be contacted at (563) 333-2610 or cdevrieze@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com