Over the last 10 years or so two things have really been center in my life.
MMA and resorts.
I have worked for around a dozen resorts and about half a dozen companies within the MMA/Grappling community and I've always wondered if the two worlds could come together to make something unique and useful to benefit the MMA community and people in general.
I know there are training camps with lot's of good things to help fighters but I hope you all will take the time to read this FRAT, hear me out and offer some thoughts, good or bad, I can handle the criticism.
Imagine if you will you are a young fighter, you have potential and you want MMA to be your livelihood. Not really easy in this day and age and probably never will be truly easy, but it could surely be a hell of a lot easier.
Now imagine someone told you there was a place you could go that's somewhere nice and out of the way, in the mountains or deep in the woods, maybe in the desert, wherever.
In this place you had a place to train, a full guy. You also have a place to live starting with something as cheap and affordable as dormitory style housing and moving on up the ladder to apartments, RV's or full on houses if the property got big enough/enough money.
So you have training facilities and a place to stay now, ok, that's not unheard of.
Now let's say you turned it into a full on resort open to anyone really but targeting the athletic or combat athletic minded.
Say you have a hotel, a restaurant, cafeteria, activities, day care, childrens activities, an extensive book and digital library focused mainly on MMA and the combat sports around it as well as the many things that help keep a fighter going such as health, nutrition, spirituality, etc.....
Ok, now you have all this but you still have no money to stay there right? You are a beginning fighter and all this sounds nice but how do you afford it?
Well, the way the national parks does it is this. You don't work here, you don't live here. The simple answer is the resort employs it's fighters....or the people who choose to live there.....at the resort so they can make money to pay for their training, rent, food, etc... but also be able to live right were they train so as to help eliminate many other costs of training such as gas, bus tickets, gym fees, basic training equipment, etc...
The nice thing about resorts is most of the jobs are simple and most average people can do them without advanced education or training. It's stuff like bartending, waiting tables, bussing, cooking, dish washing, maintenance, security, management, activities directors, guides, gardeners, web designers, techies, etc...
So here you are, a young single guy who wants to fight for a living. To start out you would have a basic place to live even if it's a dorm room you share with another person or two. You would have a cafeteria and restaurant to eat at as well as a communal area to cook and store food. You would have a place to train. You would have connections as the people around you would likely be involved in many aspects of combat sports.
Take all that and offer some kind of education. I know University is maybe a strong word to use but what I mean is what if along with everything else mentioned there were classes offered on not just fighting but refereeing, promoting, working with sponsors, media relations, sports journalism, fighter management, equipment design and manufacturing and the many other supporting factors in combat sports and MMA.
I don't wish to focus only on the young, single fighter either. What about the seasoned pro or the family man fighter?
Well, the seasoned pro would surely come in handy as a coach, trainer or manager.
Family style housing could also be offered albeit it would cost more. Like any other job though, more success in MMA means more money which means you can afford the better housing and what not. It would give people a reason to hang around if they knew they could earn themselves a nice little home on or near said resort or they could simply live in a nearby town and commute to the resort if they wanted, no big deal there.
You also don't necessarily have to rely on the fighters to work for you cause what if they don't want to work there, just want to train but can afford the costs? Well, that would be fine but how do you fill the needed job position.
Really, really easily.
I've learned after 10 years of working at national parks and ski resorts that there is a very large community of people who do nothing but work at resorts. They love the lifestyle and many would be more than happy to work at a resort like this even if they had no real interest in MMA. They have a job, food, housing and live in a cool place in a nice natural setting. That's all most of them really want anyway. One could easily use a site like coolworks.com or backdoorjobs.com to find and recruit these people as those sites are designed to be recruiting tools for resorts, cruise ships and other jobs of that nature.
If something like this existed I would immediately pack up everything I have and move there just to work and train a little bit. I don't even want to be a fighter, I just love the industry and want to work in it more and do what I can to help it improve, even just a little.
Sorry for the FRAT UG but what do you think? Would it work? Would it be economically feasible? Would it be an acceptable living/working condition? How much could you afford to pay to live in a place like this? Most resorts cost between 200-400 a month for food and housing for their employees which I've always felt was reasonable.
