Ralek Gracie, the co-founder and CEO of Metamoris responded this week to Garry Tonon’s statement about how he was contacted before Eddie Bravo’s EBI event and why he didn’t want to compete exclusively for Metamoris.
What Ralek said:
-Metamoris offered Tonon $140K a year to compete up to 12 times a year.
-Metamoris will have a kind of grappling league with more evnts during the year.
-Ralek wishes that grappling athletes would have better management and act mor eprofessional.
-Metamoris will keep signing athletes and offering them great deals.
Ralek then talked to Luke Thomas of MMAFighting.com, and discussed how Metamoris is trying to make the sport more professional, and how Garry Tonon’s image was built up by Metamorsi (he competed there twice):
“[Tonon]’s just coming into his strength and fans are figuring out who he is, mostly in part, due to Metamoris, I believe and his exposure in Metamoris,” Gracie contends. “Before that, he was just known for basically losing to Kron [Gracie] and doing a good job in the process. We basically built him up and created an opportunity to really showcase his skills, which we do for all grapplers who are very submission hungry. That’s what we’re going to continue to do.
Gracie insists Metamoris is the brand leader in the professional grappling space, but more than that, they’re “a media company, basically” in an environment where most events of this type look “trashy.” Aside from the ability to simply get a match, none have the the “capability or infrastructure of building any fighter’s brand,” he says.
“We’re continuing to give these grapplers that are relatively unknown, if you look at the martial arts landscape overall and if you look at the global landscape for sports, they’re basically unknown, but we’re trying to get them opportunities to compete and pair up against people like Joe Lauzon or like these other athletes who have opportunity or who already have names and recognition.
“That’s a really big opportunity,” he continues. “They recognize that. My thing is, who am I going to give that opportunity to? Am I going to give that to somebody who wants to take a deal where we’re giving them $140,000 a year with options for licensing, clothing deals, with bonus options depending on how they do in their matches, with other ancillary sponsorship opportunities that we’re negotiating on their behalf and we’re building and getting them opportunities for in addition to all the media that we’re so passionate about building and have the ability to project these guys off into the universe as far as grappling and sport and everything in our industry?”
