(MFC President Mark Pavelich)
Mark Pavelich: Megalomaniac or Misunderstood?
Maximum Fighting Championship president Mark Pavelich is a polarizing figure in mixed martial arts. Not unlike his UFC counterpart Dana White, Pavelich is either loved or hated, but very seldom both.
If you ask fighters like Drew Fickett or Ryan Ford, they will share unsavoury opinions about the man who verbally slammed them when each fighter acted in a manner displeasing to the Edmonton-based promoter.
Chris Price most likely has few positives to offer about Pavelich and the MFC as well, considering that the promotion’s website posted an article airing Price’s personal issues earlier in the year when the American was unable to secure entry into Alberta for his fight at MFC 24. Pavelich’s response was that he doesn’t read 90-percent of the material posted on his company’s website.
There is the other side of the coin as well. Many in Edmonton and around the MMA world speak highly of Pavelich, who has built the MFC into Canada’s premier organization and one of the Top 5 companies in North America on his own.
So which one is it – megalomaniac or misunderstood? Pavelich doesn’t understand why there is even a question to be asked in the first place.
“What is it about me?” asked the MFC president when questioned about frequently finding himself in the midst of verbal battles in the MMA community. “Do I come off like a douchebag or something?”
You be the judge.
In recent months, Pavelich caught the eye of MMA news hounds for his comments regarding both Bellator and the WEC. Speaking with Evan Shoman and “Crooklyn” on Tapout Radio, Pavelich offered the following assessment of Bellator’s foray into the mixed martial arts industry:
“I don’t like it. I don’t watch it. I don’t know anybody that does watch it…they are going to be the pet rock, the rubix cube [of MMA.] They are just not any kind of… I can’t name even five people on the fighter roster.”
The ante was upped with Reed Harris and the WEC, who are bringing a show to Edmonton’s Rexall Place later this summer.
While doing press for WEC 49, Harris offered the analogy that the currently available MMA in Edmonton and the product the WEC offers is like “seeing a high school basketball game and then going to an NBA game.”