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<h3><a href="/go=news.detail&gid=184537" target="_blank">
Reed Harris interview, part I
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<strong class="ArticleSource">[mmapayout]</strong>
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MMAPayout.com Interview with WEC’s Harris (Part I)
MMAPayout.com recently had the chance to chat with WEC General Manager Reed Harris in regards to a variety of topics. It wasn’t really your typical question and answer interview, but more a meandering conversation between two MMA enthusiasts.
Below, part one of the interview largely discusses the business consequences of the WEC’s decision to postpone WEC 43, a bit of their strategy for 2009, how the organization plans to separate and distinguish itself from the UFC, and sets the record straight about the merger talks.
Enjoy.
KP: Everybody has focused on the reasons why you’ve cancelled the event but from a business perspective, what were the consequences for the WEC in cancelling the event? In terms of some costs or obligations to the venue, the city, hotels, flights, and things like that.
RH: Certainly there were a lot of discussions with the venue and there were also some fairly significant costs to postpone the event. So, it was something that we didn’t do lightly.
The main issue for us was that this fight had a lot of implications for us in terms of future events. We want to have the winner of this fight, fight Jamie Varner, and we felt that if we substituted someone in for Ben Henderson then it would almost as if we really couldn’t do that fight as an interim belt.
The anchor for the entire show was going away, and not only that but there are also other injuries on the card that I really can’t discuss. The notifications of those injuries all happened for us within a 24hr period. One of the other guys on the main card got injured and these are the type of injuries where, like in Henderson’s case, the doctor said, “look if you can take 2-3 weeks off you can be fine.” It wasn’t a break for him, it was a sprain.
KP: There was talk of a UFC-WEC merger – and it came from Dana White…!