MIXED MARTIAL ARTS NOTEBOOK - A world grand prix tournament’s success holds one mixed martial arts organization’s future in the balance, while MMA’s biggest organization finally unveiled its pay-per-view numbers and other oddities transpired this week.

It may be the start of a revolution.

First, the International Fight League, which has struggled to maintain equilibrium, hopes this week’s World Grand Prix tournament serves as a gyroscope Saturday. The event will be televised live at 9 p.m. ET on MyNetworkTV a cable network.

No IFL event has been televised live.

“I think it’s incredibly important,” said Jay Larkin, CEO for IFL and a former sports programmer for Showtime. “A few years ago it would not have mattered that much. But in this new digital world with cell phones that carry videos, sports is one of the few areas that is not immune to the immediate distribution through the Internet.”

MMA demands immediate results or it becomes ancient history, he said.

Larkin plans to make several changes within the IFL, including an emphasis away from the local city team concept toward teams comprised from one training gym against another famous MMA training gym.

“The camp format as opposed to the team format,” Larkin said. “It’s a bottomless pool of talent and it allows us a deep bench. The team concept was a bit contrived.”

Instead of the old team format where Los Angeles, New York and other large cities grabbed fighters from various locales, the new IFL chief wants to have the foremost MMA gyms such as Pat Miletich’s gym, Renzo Gracie’s and Matt Lindland’s Team Quest gym form a team from within.

One added change proposed by Larkin could be forcing fights to become more action-packed, even on the ground.

“The standing game makes for more exciting television,” said Larkin, who directed the boxing programming for many years at Showtime. “Certainly the ground game grappling and submission holds are exciting to watch when done well. But it’s not good television.”

On Saturday, the first IFL Grand Prix tournament pits 18 of the best fighters from the organization to determine the champion at each weight class. This weekend is mostly the semifinals, where eight fighters will be eliminated at the Sears Centre near Chicago. The light heavyweight fight is for the championship.

Here are the fighters participating in the five different weight classes:

Lightweights: Chris Horodecki (10-0) of Ontario, Canada meets Illinois’s Bert Palaszewski (28-9) and Wagnney Fabiano (7-1) of Brazil tangles with Oregon’s John Gunderson (15-4).

Welterweights: Las Vegas fighter Jay Hieron (12-4) faces Missouri’s Pat Healy (18-11); and Brazil’s Delson Heleno (12-3) opposes Gideon Ray (14-6-1) of Illinois.

Middleweights: Portland’s Matt Horwich (19-9-1) rumbles with Brian Foster (9-11) of Moreno Valley, California; Florida’s Benji Radach (16-3) fights Canada’s Brent Beauparlant (6-4).

Light heavyweight: California’s Vladimir Matyushenko (19-3) and Las Vegas fighter Alex Schoenauer (12-8) fight for the championship.

Heavyweights: Roy Nelson (8-2) of Las Vegas grapples with New York’s Bryan Vetell (3-2); Brazil’s Antoine Jaoude (7-2) crosses punches with Shane Ott (3-1) of Pennsylvania.

UFC pay-per-views
Dana White, president of Ultimate Fighting Championship, said 485,000 pay-per-view buys for the March 2007 combat between Randy Couture and Tim Sylvia have been substantiated with that show possibly reaching 534,000 buys.

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What does this mean?

Couture’s gripes last week about money are not too far off. With the cost of the average UFC pay-per-view buy around $45 dollars each, multiply that by 485,000 and that means the organization made about $21 million dollars.

Where does it all go?

Couture was paid the highest at more than $1.19 million according to White. They must have some awful high production and advertising costs.

If you look at boxing a fighter like Fernando Vargas who draws about 300,000 to 400,000 pay-per-view buys gets close to $3 million each fight. And he fought for HBO where they take a bigger cut.

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