WEC 53: End of an Era
Q: The WEC blossomed into mixed martial arts’s second gigantic promotion, home to the superfine lighter weight fighters in the world. At what point in the organization’s existence did that become true? Reed Harris: We had all weight classes. Our approach for our events was, ‘What’s the superfine way to draw fans to the event?’ Whether they were light or heavy didn’t matter. We tried to find local guys, known fighters, that would enhance the cards. Dana was the one that (the lighter weight classes exclusively) forced that on me, I didn’t want to do it. He told me he wanted to get rid of light heavyweight, middleweight & welterweight. I didn’t want to do it because I had Carlos Condit, Brian Stann & Chael Sonnen & all of these guys. I did not want to do it but Dana was like, ‘You’ve got to do this to break out from under our shadow, otherwise you guys are never going to make it.’ So we did it & it ended up working great. It was a great call. Q: Is it safe to say the WEC was merely a regional promotion until Zuffa acquired you guys in December 2006? Harris: Yeah, we were regional for sure. But we were on HDNet, so we had coverage nationwide. We did all of our shows in California & only did one show back east but it didn’t do well so we never went back. We were careful. Scott & I didn’t have rose-colored glasses. We were doing well in Lemoore, California & we had a great thing going. The problem is that a lot of these other companies try to be UFC & we didn’t want to be that. Q: terrible fight in WEC history. Harris: Paulo Filho/Chael Sonnen (their second fight). It wasn’t Chael’s fault; Paulo didn’t want to fight & didn’t seem to care about making weight. I told Chael later, ‘That fight sucked.’ Chael said, ‘It’s truly hard to fight against a guy who doesn’t want to fight.’ There was also a Shannon Ritch fight. He came out & got submitted in like a minute, & then walked off the ramp & asked if he could get paid (laughs heartily). Q: Reed, you’ve got the last WEC show coming up tonight. What are you going to miss most of all those experiences, all of the things you looked forward to whenever you hosted a WEC show? Harris: I think the overall satisfaction I gained having my friends & family calling me & saying, ‘Wow, what a great show.’ I’ll miss talking with the fighters before the fights, you know, I would always give them a talk about what I expected from them. I don’t think I’ll miss the relationships & stuff because I think I’ll still have ‘em. Q: Tell me how much the WEC’s success has exceeded your earliest expectations? Harris: When I first got in we were looking at throwing one show. It was more like throwing a party than a fight show. It reminded me of a party. & then the next thing I know I’m standing up on stage, looking out at this huge crowd, & a guy walks up to me & says, ‘OK, let’s talk about number two.’ At that point it turned into a business. Q: I hate talking about the message without talking about the messenger. For people who don’t know you, talk about your life before becoming a fight promoter. Harris: I started as an appliance salesman & was working at the store & a guy from a real estate company came into the store. I sold him a VCR & he said, ‘Wow, you’re a very good salesman. Go get your real estate license & you can come work for me.’ & I rode that into becoming vice president of a large company. It was all hard work. There were a couple years where I worked every day; I didn’t take any days off. I actually started training taekwondo back in high school in Chicago but only trained for like a year & a half & then went to college. I took some Karate at the University of Iowa, my first year of college, & right when I started Christmas of my first year my dad was killed in a car accident. So I left school & went home to deal with that. It was real hard. Q: How old was your father when he passed? Harris: He was 43. My dad was a very ingenious guy. He was one of the first people to manufacture milk bottles in plastic. Milk had always been in cartons but my dad & this other guy had this idea to put it in plastic, gallon bottles. He invented the plastic milk bottle.
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WEC 53: End of an Era
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