The Fitness Zone: Bad Business

Monday, June 1, 2009

Bad Business

Saturday was supposed to be a big day for me and Team Tabuso (muay thai trainer Mark Tabuso) since our client, Cliff Fua was set to fight for a title belt that evening in the World Combat Sports Challenge at Kezar Pavilion, San Francisco. Cliff was back in the dressing room waiting, not knowing what time he was scheduled to fight (how can that be!!??), given the run around, and finally scratched from the card altogether because the other fights went over the time limit (there was a midnight "curfew"). There were I think three other fights that were cancelled as well.

It was a poorly run event as the greedy promoters obviously were in over their heads and shouldn't have scheduled so many bouts (there were 18) when they knew they had to shut down by midnight (scheduling so many bouts ensures more ticket sales). To make matters worse, the event was supposed to start at 6pm, but didn't start til nearly 8!!! Just dis-organized from top (promoters) to bottom (the "security", er, rent-a-cops taking too long to let everyone in).

I was really disappointed for Cliff because he worked so hard to get into the best shape of his life for this fight. He showed up to every one of my workouts as well as Mark's muay thai sessions and just put in work. Well, just got to learn from this experience and never take a fight with this promotor ever again. Cliff is resilient and I know he'll come back even stronger his next bout!

All was not lost, though as I got some exposure by wearing my "exclusive" Fitness Tech fight t-shirt, gave out some business cards, and even took some pictures with some famous MMA fighters, Anderson Silva and Urijah Faber. I'm slowly learning that marketing yourself is so important in this fitness industry, you can have all the exercise knowledge in the world, but without networking, personality, and name recognition, the majority of people will not buy what you're trying to sell. Anyway's here's some pics of the poorly-run event: