The Well-Oiled Machine that is Shine Fights
by Balrog on Sep 6, 2010 4:08 PM EDT
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PrintNot to bag on mma blogs or online journalism, but after sifting through dozens of articles that were either verbatim re-posts or rehashes of information released by other sites, I felt the need to see if I could find any official announcements from Shine Fights on the future of their Lightweight Grand Prix. (Caveat= I'm not sure if it's his wild charisma or intensely honest eyes, but as soon as Luke Thomas confirmed it on MMANation I took it as fact the show was moved. He has that much journalistic credibility with me).
And after going through the various online media outlets of Shine Fights, all I can say is holy-s, their marketing coordination is a joke. Not that I held Shine in high esteem after their last debacle, but the only way to really describe the marketing strategy for Shine is "giant cluster-f."
First I went to their website, http://www.shinefights.com/. The site is still advertising for the event to take place at the Patriot Center, as well as allowing patrons to buy tickets for the events. Their last new release was from May 7th, and the only recently updating feature is a twitter feed (under the title Worlds Collide: Matorga vs. Thomas), where various mma sites are posting links to stories about what's happening with Shine. But no actual input from Shine.
Shine obviously hasn't informed the Patriot Center of any changes, because the event is still listed on the Patriot Center website along with a link to buying tickets. Consequently Patriot Center tickets are handled by Ticketmaster, here's their refund policy if you've already bought tickets- http://www.ticketmaster.com/h/returns.html?tm_link=tm_i_rp
So I went to check the twitter of Shine Fights
Shinefight's CEO hasn't posted anything since this dubious statement last May (@SFP_CEO)
Shinefight's own twitter account (@Shinefightsmma).... and I'm guessing it's the legit twitter account for ShineFights despite the fact they have only 61 followers, had no announcements. Other sites had posted links to stories about Shine moving but still no comment directly from Shine.
Finally Shine Fights COO Jason Chambers on his twitter (@FollowMMA) had an announcement from Shine about the show (without actually addressing that they were leaving one location and moving to another)
http://www.ticketstorm.com/event/shinelightweightgrandprix/firstcouncilcasino/newkirk/4952
So it looks like the event is headed to Newkirk Oklahoma and the First Council Casino. The First Council Casino website had yet to add anything about Shine Fight's show, but they are advertising Loretta Lynn for Saturday Night.
I know coordinating everything in a promotion, including online advertising, is a huge task. And I know Shine probably wanted to avoid making premature statements about moving the show until they were 100% this was route they were going to take. But now that the show is definitely moving, Shine should be doing everything possible to put out the current information so that everyone is crystal clear on what is happening, and they can begin trying to sell tickets in Oklahoma show. Dragging their feet and releasing information only in small dribbles can't be the best business strategy for making the best of what they have, and contributes to the promotions image as a shady promotion.
Two Sides notes:
1. From the twitter of Jason Chambers 
Apparently Kyle 'the Alley Cat" Baker has been added to the grandprix, not quite sure who he is replacing but he is now the fighter I'm rooting for in the tournament. But adding a local fighter to a show just after you decide to pack up and move somewhere else? Genius!
2. Apparently Jason Chambers is a twitter follower of both Luke Thomas and Bloody Elbow. If you somehow end up reading this, I'm sure all the problems with Shine are totally not your fault and if they are... then don't take it too hard. Things happen. On the plus side ...........um........ you look spiffy in all your pictures?
The FanPosts are solely the subjective opinions of Bloody Elbow readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bloody Elbow editors or staff.
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Did you have a bet with someone that Shine Fights would screw up their second event in a row?
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by Brian Hemminger on Sep 6, 2010 8:57 PM EDT up reply actions
Plenty of Updates
I’ll throw in links and full quotes laters when I have more time, but-
Brent and others are posting articles on fighters facing suspensions for fighting in an unsanctioned event. These mainly source an MMARising article, which stated they had confirmed everyone fighting in the event would receive suspensions. The article doesn’t include an actual statement from either the ABC or OSAC, so there’s a slight gray area over what specifically was said by whom, but I’m sure none of it was good for Shine Fights. There are separate Native American athletic commissions so the fight wouldn’t necessarily have to be approved by the state of Oklahoma, but it doesn’t sound like any of these separate commissions are sanctioning the event.
There was a Q&A over with Jason Chambers and Santino DeFranco at mmaunderground, where they basically said they were fighting under the supervision of the people who ran previous events there (C3 Fights) and no one from those events had been suspended, so everything was cool. They also claimed Marcus Aurelio’s contract had an exclusivity clause and Shine had yet to grant him permission to fight in Dream.
Either way this just seems ridiculous on Shine’s part. They just keep digging themselves in deeper with the athletic commissions and I really don’t see how they run anything but unsanctioned fights after this.
Oh, and the lack of response in communicating their changes I wrote about in the fanpost? They’re moving to a venue with a capacity of 1,500, and is part of a casino. I’m guessing they figure they can make that without a huge effort, otherwise they would expend the couple of man-hours it would take to update everything online.
about the suspensions, from reading this article on fanhouse, it seems like the commission won’t or can’t actually suspend people for fighting. He says they will refuse to license anyone who participates for 60 days, which really only means they can’t fight in a sanctioned fight in Oklahoma for 60 days. That’s probably not that big of an issue for the fighters, but the other issues that stem from no commission (mainly no one to guarantee you get paid) are still there.
Update as promised
To Phildo- the original article from MMARising indicates that suspension of fighters would be ABC wide (that’s the suspension of liscening fighters for future dates.) Again I would like to see the direct quote from the ABC on this, but I’m pretty sure any recommendation from Oklahoma would be honored by the rest of the ABC. And yes, because the fight is on Tribal territory they do not have the authority to stop the event outright, similar to if Shine held the fight in a state which lacked commission oversight, such as Alabama. Shine claims that C3 Fights has a proven track record of running safe events at the Casino, but those claims seem dubious at best. In short, yeah I also have a lot of concerns about not having a commission watching over this debacle.
Here’s the Bloody Elbow article covering a bunch more of what’s going on with Shine, the article from Brent I mentioned, and the Q&A from the Underground Forums
The quotes I was gonna pull are pretty much all covered in the BE post so feel free to give it a look.
His beard is the engine that drives his charisma
but his eyes say “yes, believe me.” On his high-school aptitude test his top two results were MMA broadcaster and cult leader.
Why Shine Fights is bad...
Shine Fights from the day they announce the event at the Patriot Center I didn’t think the event was going to happen.No way a new company,come into a new market with less then 30 days to promote,and sell tickets,and go mlive on PPV.That can’t be done,the UFC would’ve a hard time doing that.No commission should deal with these guys because clearly there out to mislead everyone.
by TERRENCEFROMSOUTHEAST on Sep 7, 2010 6:44 PM EDT reply actions
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