IFL in Deep Trouble

I don't want to sound like someone who can foresee the future but I've been predicting the IFL's demise for about 6 months now. However it didn't take much skill in predicting it's demise considering the product absolutely sucked. In fact, anyone with 1/8 of a brain who has watched the IFL on tv could have predicted it's demise.

The International Fight League on Tuesday announced that it has canceled its planned August 15 event at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, N.J., signaling what seems to be the inevitable conclusion to the imploding fight promotion.

In a prepared statement, the IFL said that it continues to explore options for maximizing shareholder value in the publicly traded company, but if the IFL is unable to leverage any of those options, the company may seek protection from its creditors through a court proceeding, otherwise known as bankruptcy.

The prepared statement also indicated that the IFL will “continue to downsize its staff to reduce costs,” which is the corporately correct way of saying they will be laying off more of their employees.

The downsizing, according to Larkin, does not include any fighters on their roster, but he did mention contractual obligations with the coaches in the league, and other employees that could be casualties of the changes.

“We are exploring our contractual relationships with our coaches. We’re looking at that, but we certainly are not cutting coaches,” said Larkin. “We’re trying to minimize with the heads that have to roll because everybody’s been in this together for a while and everybody has a great deal of respect and affection for each other, but if we don’t take some radical steps there won’t be a company.”

The promotion has gone through several changes and facelifts over the past year to try and rescue it from its turbulent beginnings, but such attempts have not gained traction and everyone is left to wonder if an upturn will ever come.

The IFL was doomed when they had 2 hours of prime time broadcasting that they did absolutely nothing with. They had a golden opportunity on the MY Network and destroyed it by continually showing the same 10 fights over and over again. Not to mention, they were all replays and no one ever even knew when the fights took place. They tried to show standings of the IFL teams but they were inconsistent every telecast. One week the Condors record would be 3-2 and the next week they would be 1-1. There was absolutely no way to follow the season because no one knew when the so called season's took place.

The last thing they did, which was the kiss of death, was to promote the violence and savagery of the sport. They also portrayed the fighters as heartless guys who liked to give beatings and not the fact that the fighters were extremely technical and well rounded individuals. They didn't lose ratings because of the fighters, in fact they had some pretty good talent. But they promoted nothing but violence, the very thing that got the UFC kicked off of pay per view in the late 90's. That's just plain stupid and some very rich people are losing a few bucks because of it.

But again, it's not like you couldn't see that one coming.