Ken Pavia

('Let my people go!')

EliteXC fighters have apparently had enough of waiting around to see what becomes of their contracts, and are now threatening to get tough.  MMA Payout reports that many of the fighters have joined forces with the Mixed Martial Arts Fighters’ Association to bring a formal complaint against the organization for holding them in limbo all this time.  EliteXC is said to have been given a week to respond before the fighters file their complaint in court.

Some high-profile agents, such as Ken Pavia and Ed Soares, are thought to be involved with filing the complaint, just as they were in banding together to stop the auction of the remaining fighter contracts.

Let’s hope the outcome is that EliteXC finally admits the jig is up and lets everyone get on with their lives.  But if that was acceptable to them you’d have to wonder why they haven’t done it already.  At least the clock is ticking now, so we should at least be moving in the direction of some sort of resolution.

(You do not want to mess with this man. Photo courtesy of CombatLifestyle via myspace.com/kenpavia.)

Led by the always-outspoken Ken Pavia, a group of high-profile MMA agents have joined forces to block their fighters from being sold to the highest bidder during Showtime's planned auction of Pro Elite’s corporate assets on November 17th. From a new press release drafted by the Pav, and signed by Monte Cox, Ed Soares, and Cesar Gracie, among others:

Individually we consummated promotional agreements with Pro Elite. These agreements were made based on a multiplicity of factors including but not limited to relationships with certain Pro Elite personnel, venues, television exposure, jurisdictional concerns, public relations support, and numerous other intangibles. These considerations are not readily transferable...

We intend to fight the lawful ability to transfer these assets, and as we believe these are personal services contracts, we do not believe there is an obligation to perform if transferred. With pooled resources we are prepared to fight this issue.

The unity of this effort is unprecedented and the message that is being sent is clear. Absent significant pre-established negotiated terms, do not bid on these contracts unless you are prepared to fight the challenge to their legality. It is our intention to honor our commitment to Pro Elite, but if Pro Elite is not able to perform in accordance with the contractual terms, the fighters should be granted unrestricted free agency with the unfettered ability to enter the marketplace.

It's good to see business rivals uniting for the rights of their fighters, especially when they haven't always been civil towards each other in the past. Hopefully Showtime will get the message that some of these "assets" they plan on auctioning actually represent the livelihoods of human beings.

The love/hate relationship between Joe Riggs and his agent Ken Pavia is a matter of public record. In fact, Pavia has enough admiration for Joe Diesel that he has no problem blowing up the dude's spot once in a while, as in his latest column for MMA Junkie. Though this story about Riggs's run-in with a paraplegic grappler isn't quite on the level of the Ricco Rodriguez car-accident switcheroo, it's still pretty amazing. Check it:

[Nick] is a son of a bitch who is 200 lbs. of super-human upper-body strength and walks on his hands because he has no legs, literally...The first time Pat Miletich [told Riggs] to roll with him he thought it was a joke. Diesel playfully obliged and got into his guard. Nick proceeded to clap his stubs, which end mid-thigh, into Joe’s jugular vein and twist his arm off. He said his neck was sore for two weeks as a result. Joe said he got pissed and cursed at him. He said, “Let’s go again.” This time Nick grabbed him in a leg lock and was so strong that Joe was forced to tap again. But Nick, who apparently didn’t like to be cursed at, said “not yet Joe” and torqued it further. That kind of stuff doesn’t go ever well among fighters.

Now, Joe was really heated and demanded to try again. Well, he lasted a little longer — like a minute — before it was tap No. 3...Diesel was so upset that he stormed off to the locker room and showered up. In came Nick walking on his hands and Joe, in an act of retribution, proceeded to pee on the shower floor.

Nick then forced Joe to shampoo his hair for him. No, not really, but I like the visual.

By the way, Riggs is pain-free after undergoing a procedure yesterday to freeze three nerves in his lower back that were pinched by an out-of-place disc suffered in his fight with Cory Devela, and wants to get back in the cage as soon as possible. As Riggs told Pavia: "Make sure Devela doesn't fight anyone else. I don't want him exposed before I smash him."

Here's the Riggs/Devela fight from Saturday's Strikeforce event, which shows just how Riggs got his back effed up.

Says agent Ken Pavia in an e-mail to CagePotato:

[Joe] is having a procedure this week where they freeze a nerve. Disc is impinging on nerve now. Similar pain to a broken hip. He is ok though.

After the surgery, they'll know more regarding how long Riggs will be out of action. We'll keep you posted.

(Heavyweight champion of the industry.)

Whether you need to take your fight career to the next level, or you're stuck in a Thai prison for a "misunderstanding" with a local bar-girl, Ken Pavia is your man. The New York-bred, Huntington Beach-based MMA agent drives the careers of Karo Parisyan, Rob McCullough, Chris Lytle, James Thompson, Renato Sobral, Phil Baroni, and a few dozen others, and his work doesn't stop at just arranging fights and locking down sponsorship deals. After realizing we knew next-to-nothing about what an MMA agent actually does, we decided to drop "The Pav" a line and get the lowdown on how he got his start and how he keeps on top of the competition. Also, coffee enemas.

THE EARLY DAYS

You were a sports agent for 12 years after graduating from the Miami School of Law. Did you focus on any sport in particular?
I primarily represented baseball and hockey players, though I did have a couple basketball players and a football player. I had my own firm from about ’91 through ’03 or so.

And you’ve said you retired because you got bored. Was there more to it than that?
I don’t know if it was so much boredom — I was a boutique firm competing against larger, much better capitalized corporate firms, and capitalization was ultimately a stumbling block in my ability to maintain higher-profile guys. I’d recruit a football player coming out of college, and it’d be about six to nine months before he saw any money, and he’d want a couple-hundred-thousand dollar advance. After a while I needed a break from recruiting and the daily grind.

So what did you plan on doing with the rest of your life?
Well, I took a couple years off and sat on the couch, watched sports, ate bon-bons, and went through a divorce. I was semi-retired and trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Eventually I opened up an auto auction and I met Ricco Rodriguez, who dragged me into the MMA game.

Was Ricco your first client?
He was. A mutual friend introduced us, and Ricco sat me down and said “We need mainstream agents to cross over and help the fighters get the kind of compensation that the owners are getting.” I had been a fan of the sport — I think I’d seen pretty much every UFC event — but Ricco’s the one who convinced me to get in from a business standpoint.

How did you go about finding and attracting clients in those early days?
Having the former UFC heavyweight champion was sort of a high-profile thing, and being in Huntington Beach — which was a hotbed for MMA talent at the time — I was able to find a couple of local guys with Ricco’s help. I’d take Ricco to fights, he’d meet the up-and-coming talent, and they’d pretty much come to me. I was blessed that the talent was seeking us out as opposed to the grind I had in other sports.