Zombie ProElite Continues Revival

MMAJunkie.com spoke with Stratus CEO Paul Feller last week about his company’s acquisition of ProElite, Inc, the failed/doomed/inept/tainted mixed martial arts brand known primarily for endorsing Kimbo Slice and Gina Carano, with the occasional giant dragon thrown in for variety’s sake.

"I know when I'm in Dubai or Abu Dhabi or Shanghai, I can put out the name ProElite, and one out of every three people will know who Pro Elite is," Feller said. This is absurd.

“Stratus has no previous experience in MMA but plans to hire executives with an industry background,” the copy read. This, too, is absurd.

“ProElite was the first major potential contender to the UFC,” Feller continued. There’s your trifecta.

ProElite as a brand is a giant vacuum of nothing: nothing more than a placard for the appeal of Slice, Carano, and fights on free network television. Feller has not purchased Cola-Cola: he has not even purchased Doctor Bold. He has acquired a property that went out in a flaming carcass of mismanagement and disgrace. How that translates into an equitable and viable opportunity is beyond me. But I’m not nearly as smart as the MMA entrepreneur. That takes a really special mentality.

MMA has become a vanity project for companies with money to burn but little conception of how utterly and irrevocably cemented the UFC brand is in the mind of the fight consumer. With 12 pay-per-view events a year, there is no additional disposable income allotted to give an upstart promotion a charitable try. (Even the UFC’s own sister brand, the WEC, may very well suffer because of this.) Companies wind up treading water, nickel and diming themselves into obsolescence. They would be much better off expediting success or failure and focusing efforts onto a single event, hiring an athlete of considerable recognition, and gathering television and viral support for the promotion. Anything else is just slow decay.