‘Fight Now TV’ Launches Tuesday with High Hopes, Rapid Expansion Goals at LinesMaker

‘Fight Now TV’ Launches Tuesday with High Hopes, Rapid Expansion Goals

To hear Mike Gar­row tell it, start­ing a new chan­nel is some­thing like giv­ing birth. It takes time, there are brief moments of pain and oth­ers of ter­ror, but behind it all is a gen­uine labor of love. After a two-year process of plan­ning and exe­cu­tion, Garrow’s project, a 24-hour com­bat sports chan­nel called Fight Now TV, will launch on Tues­day morn­ing on Cable­vi­sion sys­tems in the New York, tri-state area.

While Fight Now TV is ded­i­cated to more than just mixed mar­tial arts — box­ing, grap­pling and kick­box­ing will also be fea­tured, among oth­ers sports — MMA is expected to be a major com­po­nent of pro­gram­ming. Among the channel’s minor­ity own­ers is UFC Hall of Famer Randy Couture.

Accord­ing to Gar­row, the com­pany has signed deals with sev­eral pro­mo­tions in the U.S. and around the world to air events. Fight Now TV will launch two fran­chises. One, “Amer­i­can Made MMA,” will show­case regional pro­mo­tions like Ring of Fire and Extreme Chal­lenge. Another, “Global Impact MMA,” will turn the spot­light on inter­na­tional offer­ings, like BAMMA and Cage War­riors. It also has obtained rights to his­tor­i­cal events, and can offer ret­ro­spec­tives on cur­rent stars. For exam­ple, they might show cur­rent UFC wel­ter­weight champ George St-Pierre’s last fight before join­ing the UFC, or Quin­ton “Ram­page” Jack­son years before he became a superstar.

The chan­nel also plans to cover the world’s top pro­mo­tions like the UFC, Strike­force, Bel­la­tor and DREAM, in news pro­grams, with orig­i­nal inter­views, and tak­ing fans behind the scenes. All in all, it’s an extremely ambi­tious plan for a chan­nel that took just over two years from thought to launch.

“I want peo­ple to under­stand we’re try­ing to put our best foot for­ward,” Gar­row told MMA Fight­ing in a recent inter­view. “There are going to be grow­ing pains, but we will grow. Look at ESPN. When they first launched, it was with darts and soft­ball and strong­man com­pe­ti­tions. I’m a fan, too. I want this to be as strong as we can pos­si­bly make it. If peo­ple are sup­port­ive and value it, I look for­ward to serv­ing those fans for a long time.”

For Gar­row, it’s his sec­ond shot at a vir­tu­ally iden­ti­cal goal. He was the cre­ative vision behind The Fight Net­work, a Cana­dian com­bat sports chan­nel that once hoped to pen­e­trate the U.S. mar­ket. But the two sides later split over dif­fer­ences, and the Fight Network’s growth even­tu­ally stalled. Gar­row politely declines to talk about the sit­u­a­tion due to ongo­ing lit­i­ga­tion between the sides, but Cou­ture — who pre­vi­ously worked with him at the Cana­dian chan­nel — said The Fight Network’s loss is Fight Now TV’s gain.

“I think The Fight Net­work existed because it was Mike Garrow’s vision and his dream,” Cou­ture said. “And when they did what they did to him, that dream and vision went some­where else. You’re see­ing it come back with Fight Now TV. He’s the guy who had all the pieces. He still has the orig­i­nal nap­kin he wrote the idea down on when he first came up with it. He has the pas­sion to con­nect the dots and make this happen.”

While Fight Now TV will ini­tially launch only on Cable­vi­sion — ironic given that New York and Con­necti­cut are two of the few remain­ing states that have yet to sanc­tion MMA — Gar­row hopes to aggres­sively expand around the coun­try in rapid fash­ion, say­ing they are likely to be announc­ing other deals quite soon.

“Like any­thing, we want to get it in as many homes as pos­si­ble,” he said. “We’re real­is­tic in our approach. We’ve got our inter­nal pro­jec­tions. I can’t get into spe­cific num­bers but I’m pretty con­fi­dent large pock­ets of the U.S. will be expe­ri­enc­ing Fight Now TV by at least the mid­dle of the summer.”

While the chan­nel has no exist­ing busi­ness deal with UFC and Strike­force par­ent com­pany Zuffa, there is hope that Couture’s involve­ment might help forge a rela­tion­ship. Cou­ture acknowl­edges the poten­tial impor­tance of such a devel­op­ment and says sim­ply, “I expect we’ll be able to do it.”

Gar­row, mean­while, notes that with a 24-hour, 7-day a week exis­tence, the chan­nel will be able to offer major cov­er­age of major events with analy­sis, fea­tures and inter­views. MMAJunkie.com’s daily radio show will also be simul­cast Mon­day through Fri­day, giv­ing fans access to many major fight­ers and insid­ers. A week­end show, Fight Cen­tral hosted by JT McCarthy, will break down major fights and events. Cou­ture will also pro­vide expert analysis.

With 52 weeks a year in a sport that has no off-season, Gar­row believes there will always be great fights to be found. Some­where around the world, some­one will be fight­ing, and Fight Now TV will be on the look­out for it. What SPEED is to auto sports, Fight Now TV wants to be to com­bat sports.

Right now though, things are still in a con­trolled state of chaotic antic­i­pa­tion. There is much to be done before the switch is flipped and Fight Now TV goes live at 11 am east­ern on Tues­day. Gar­row half-jokingly says that he ran­domly wakes up at 2:30 in the morn­ing on most nights as the chan­nel makes final preparations.

“Over­all, our mis­sion is to cre­ate an out­let for com­bat­ive sports, not just MMA,” Cou­ture said. “For exam­ple, there’s a huge grap­pling move­ment, not just nation­ally but inter­na­tion­ally with things like Abu Dhabi, NAGA, and U.S. Pankra­tion. And there’s always a void for ama­teur wrestling, no place to find or watch these dual meets. There is a ton of stuff in the com­bat­ive sports genre, and we can pro­vide that kind of pro­gram­ming to fans. There is a ton of oppor­tu­nity and need for this kind of channel.”

Related Posts:

• Hopes High as Ohio State Returns 3 Stars
• Fad­ing Title Hopes Worry Ferrari
• Kesler to Make Sea­son Debut Tuesday
• Indi­ana High School Star Returns Home After Michi­gan Plane Crash
• Jef­fer­son Still Hopes to Start for LSU

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•