ICON Sport, Hawaii’s largest MMA organization has been purchased by media and entertainment company ProElite.  For those of you who don’t know, ProElite has held many huge MMA events, most recently the EliteXC-Uprising event held at the Blaisdell this past September that included Robbie Lawler, Murilo Rua, Charuto, Jake Shields, Mark Oshiro, and Gina Carano, just to name a few.  They are also broadcasted on Showtime PPV, which is huge for the local Hawaii fighters to get national recognition.

ICON Sport has been around since 1995, and if you have been following them, they used to be called SuperBrawl up until TJ Thompson, the owner of ICON, decided to give his organization a more professional name that made MMA more of a sport than merely a barbaric brawl.

It was reported that TJ and co-owner Odd Haugen were paid $350,000 in cash, while giving the pair 200,000 shares of ProElite’s stock, which is currently $8 a share (Source: Honolulu Advertiser).  The Advertiser also reported that if the local promoters meet the financial goals for next year, they will be paid an additional $1000.  This adds up to a total of $1.95 million in cash and stock.  Congrats TJ!

The ProElite events held in Hawaii will be run by TJ and Odd, since they have been successful holding local MMA events and bringing great fighters to the islands including Robbie Lawler, Mayhem Miller, Tim Sylvia, and Frank Trigg.  They were also able to put Hawaii fighters on the map, which include Niko Vitale, Egan Inoue, Kala Hose, and Scott Junk.  This success obviously translates to TJ’s efforts to make MMA popular in Hawaii, and so far, he has done a great job.

The next ProElite event in Hawaii will be an April 26 event, but the card has not been scheduled yet.

ProElite also intends to create a reality show about MMA, most likely to compete with the highly successful The Ultimate Fighter Series on SpikeTV.  They have contacted Mark Burnett, producer of reality shows such as The Apprentice, Survivor, The Contender, and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? just to name a few, to produce their show.  They have not disclosed information as to which cable station will broadcast the series.

• MMA Event in Hawaii to be Broadcasted Live on Pay-Per-View
• “Icon Sports - All In” Tomorrow
• Icon Sport: FEARLESS on June 30th

               
RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.