EliteXC Disappears Into the Ether
Posted by Alan Conceicao on October 20th, 2008
As Josh Gross details in his SI news piece , EXC is apparently all done. From a personal perspective, I’m somewhat surprised that the talk with Showtime Sports proved fruitless given the talk in the last week or so. The combination of the lack of brand awareness (thus justifying the continued existence of EXC in particular) with the poor financial states of both the company and the markets were enough to ultimately bury it, however. It doesn’t necessarily prove that MMA on CBS or Showtime are dead, but it seems likely that its definitely hit a speed bump. If there any consolation to the independent fighters in the sport, EXC was never able to relate itself as a strong brand (in part, because of the style of promotion it chose), which would seem to make any resulting replacement startup from Showtime or CBS fairly painless when it comes to replacing it should they choose to soldier on.
Another interesting aspect to think about is the talk of Strikeforce getting live fights on NBC. As far as replacements go, its tough to think of a better promoter that could come along to snatch up some of the mid and high level talents once promoted by the organization. Time will only tell.