HOW COME NO ONE thought of this before?
The amount of programming and the number of people involved in “combatant sports” like Karate or Tae Kwon Do, or wrestling or boxing – or even boxing-style exercise training – is big. The number of fans of those sports just swell the ranks of potential viewers and Canada’s love of hockey fights is legendary. 
We have The Golf Channel, Speed Channel, the Tennis Channel (U.S. only), The NHL Network and NFL Network. Funny how there hasn’t been a boxing or martial arts channel. Until now.
Newly minted independent broadcaster The Fight Network launched 12 days ago on Rogers Cable and appears set to make a real dent in coverage of the fight game – as well as wrestling, mixed marital arts and programming surrounding those genres
The Fight Network is the first and only all combatant sports and entertainment channel. It’s got some “name brand” prime time programming, including Showtime Boxing, Broadway Boxing, Pride Fighting Championship, K-1, TNA Wrestling, FMW and others.
Broadcasting newcomer Mike Garrow, as he explains below in an edited transcript of his chat with www.carrt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien, was simply intrigued by the launch of the digi-nets, polled his hockey buddies on the viability of such an idea (one of whom is a financier and now co-owner) and found a new career.
Greg O’Brien: Let’s start with a run-down of the programming.
Mike Garrow: We’re going to lead off with FMW, which is Frontier Martial Arts wrestling from Japan and it’s never been seen in North America, only previously in Japan or on DVD. And we’re starting things off with Terry Funk, who’s a classic, well-known wrestler. Do you know the wrestling game at all?
GOB: I knew it pretty well in the ’80s.
MG: So, does the name Terry Funk mean anything?
GOB: It does ring a bell, yes.
MG: Well, we’re going to start of with a barbed wire exploding death match. It’s so over the top, completely out there. I’m quite proud of what we’ve been able to secure in terms of programming for the channel.
The concept of Fight Network from day one was always the building of a brand and Fight Network will ultimately become the brand in terms of media for anything to do with combatant sports and theme-related entertainment, be it television, radio – which we’re already doing – be it the web portals that we have already, and some book publishing opportunities.
And, being a 24-hour media service in the combatant sports game, it lends itself to live events and that’s someplace we’re already going.
There was a lot of talk in the States about a martial arts channel or a boxing channel but no one went in the direction we did to bring in the best in boxing, the best in pro wrestling, the best in mixed marital arts, theme related movies and documentaries – cover the news – all of this is captured under The Fight Network brand.
We don’t believe at the end of the day, we’re building a digi-net. We’re saying, “you know what, this is a specialty service and if anything, because of the format of our channel, we’re able to throw it out there in the marketplace and legitimately say this is the first and only 24 hour combatant sports and entertainment channel in North America.”
There’s nothing like this in the U.S. and it’s interesting because a lot of Canadians that heard about it, thought it was a U.S. channel and a lot of Americans who heard about it, thought it was a U.S. channel.
GOB: What’s your background in broadcasting?
MG: My background is in the interactive space. I used to do stuff where we’d take Sony PS2 games and convert them into online applications, for example.
But back in 2001, when the first round of digital channels were launched, the company I was with – an independent contractor – prepared some WebTV samples for Global. I’m from Ottawa and I thought these new digital channels were interesting, so I went to Ottawa and sat in on some of the hearings.
Then, I came back to Toronto with the group of guys I play hockey with on Monday nights. I asked them what they thought of the concept of all fights all the time and they said “Garrow, that would rock.”
… And, one of the guys on my hockey team, Sandy Winick, is actually a financier and he told me one day, “you know what, I love this.” He had nothing to do with broadcasting but he arranged all the financing… and we decided (after basing its broadcast operations with Channel Zero) to put all of our resources into two things, programming and marketing.
And now we’ve got a nice team of 12 people working on the Fight Network. And, if you were looking at this as the launch of a sports channel, in year one, what we’ve done would be the equivalent of going out and getting deals with the NHL, Major League Baseball and the National Football League because Pride Fighting Championships is a premium mixed martial arts organization out of Japan, TNA Wrestling is an upcoming wrestling organization building a global brand that hasn’t been seen in Canada and we’re quite happy to say we have an exclusive deal with them
GOB: Is that a competitor to the WWE?
MG: Yes, but it’s a different style or brand of wrestling. We also do some work with the WWE with our radio property, Live Audio Wrestling.
The big one is we’ve also got Showtime. We’re bringing in Showtime boxing to Canada on a weekly basis, live. And as a new digital broadcaster, that’s not a bad position to be in.
GOB: Are you allowed to show movies?
MG: Yes, we are. We can show theme-related movies and one of the things that Brian Sobie, our v-p of programming, has done is get movies that were a little bit off the path – maybe ones with a bit of a cult following and ones that hadn’t been aired before by some of the other broadcasters so…
GOB: I saw Roadhouse about a month ago and thought of the Fight Network. I don’t know if that applies (laughter)
MG: You never know, it might. But I do have a rule that The Karate Kid will never appear on the Fight Network (laughter). Take a series like the Street Fighter sorties which inspired Quentin Tarantino for Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2. We have that and it’s never been aired here before here.
And when you look at documentaries, we have, from the National Film Board, “The Last Round” with Muhammad Ali and George Chuvalo, then we’ve got “Wrestling With Shadows”, the Brett Hart story.
You look at the amount of stuff that’s available and I’m happy to say we have the ability to be very selective about the stuff we air on the network.
GOB: How much of your own content will you be producing?
MG: We are going to be producing content primarily in and around the news portions of it. When you go to www.thefightnetwork.com, it is a pretty progressive site. Because combatant sports is so big, with all of the different specialties, we looked at all of the sites on the web and made strategic acquisitions and partnerships to be able to acquire content on a daily basis.
So, we acquired Live Audio Wrestling, which was a weekly talk radio show airing on 640 Toronto (which is all about the behind-the-scenes-scene in pro wrestling and mixed martial arts) It’s been airing for six years, pulling in a market share of 17.1 for its time slot among males 18 to 44 and we were able to syndicate it to five other markets (Calgary, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Sudbury and Edmonton).
The response has been great and… it’s a great vehicle for The Fight Network because it lets us promote The Fight Network and lets us control the ad inventory.
GOB: What would you characterize as your anchor programming, your prime time stuff?
MG: Pride Fighting Championships, TNA Wrestling Xplosion, K1, Broadway Boxing, these are definitely staples for our prime time lineups.
GOB: And I think you mentioned earlier you’ll be getting into the live action business.
MG: We’re being approached by independent promoters across Canada and the States and I think one of the things we can do is work with them – maybe not so much on a production level but on a marketing level – to help create awareness for the regional productions they’re putting on.
It also helps build us at the grass roots.
GOB: How big is the market in Canada for this channel – because this type of thing isn’t everybody’s cup of tea?
MG: It’s big. It skews to a male audience but it’s been surprising how many e-mails we get from women… We’ve been able to secure a number of advertising deals – pre-launch – and in some cases, have even signed three-year deals with the network.
It’s very encouraging.
