MMA: Should Mainstream MMA Start Showing Respect to Tachi Palace Fights?

Every two-to-four months, the standard hustle-and-bustle of the UFC's fight weeks usually includes something that a marginal portion of the MMA has taken note of: a supershow-caliber event by the Tachi Palace Fights promotion at the Tachi Palace in Lemoore, California.

For a regional MMA promotion (and a local MMA promotion for Californians with a love for MMA action outside of the UFC), TPF has risen in the past year and a half, not only because of their collection of talent from various promotions, but also because they have the best assortment of 125-pound talent that anyone can find in the stateside circuit of the pro scene.

Former WEC fighter Ian McCall, Darrell Montague, Jussier Da Silva, Ulysses Gomez, Mamoru Yamaguchi: All are flyweights who most fans of Tachi Palace Fights are familiar with and all were on display last weekend at TPF 10: Let The Chips Fall.

While Da Silva was able to bring the pain and dominate Yamaguchi throughout their fight,  McCall submitted Moontague in the third round to become the new TPF flyweight champion.

MMA Junkie released the final earnings of the fighters from TPF 10 on Tuesday afternoon, with the combined payroll of all the fighters on the card totaling to $85,000, and the combined payroll of all five aforementioned flyweights totaled to $33,000, including the win bonuses earned by Da Silva, Gomez and McCall.

Now, I'm the last guy one should ask about salaries, but $33,000 is about the amount of money you normally see on the paycheck of a preliminary-card fighter who is fighting for the UFC, if I'm not mistaken.

Well, it’s actually thousand bucks short of what Brian Bowles and Aaron Simpson got for UFC 132, but it’s close.

Also, the $85,000 is another figure you'd only see in the UFC, although it's a small figure you'd see in the UFC compared to some of the figures guys get paid per fight.

Then again, the UFC has existed longer than Tachi Palace Fights, so it's a no-brainer that the fighters in the UFC would make five-to-six figure amounts.

Still, we must ask: Should we, as fans of the mainstream MMA World, start to show a little bit respect to Tachi Palace Fights?

Simple answer: Yes, we should show them respect—a lot more respect than that they’re getting now.

First off, Tachi Palace Fights is a promotion that exists because, without a suitable proving ground for Zuffa-MMA and Bellator hopefuls, the sport cannot exist, and the task of preparing the next generation of mixed martial artists in a “proving ground” for the big time cannot fall solely on local promotions and the likes of Titan FC, King Of The Cage, Shark Fights and the slightly lesser-acknowledged Legacy Fighting Championships.

Yes, there is a flyweight division of 126 pounds and under in King of The Cage, but although KOTC holds the division, it’s not a very active division, so for fans who need a break from the divisions 135-lbs to 263-lbs, Tachi Palace Fights delivers a suitable alternative.

Also, with the rising demand for flyweight MMA in the stateside pro circuit, more fans will want to see as much of the 125-lb division as humanly possible, and as the sport progresses, the division will begin to grow more in popularity as well.

That, plus after the flyweight division establishes itself, men’s MMA will have a complete and even assortment of divisions and, therefore, will not need anything more than for a fresh crop of fighters to represent the then-eight divisions.

Can the UFC do that with a 125-lb division that only features Joseph Benavidez, Demetrious Johnson and a bunch of guys who drop down to flyweight once the division is established, even though those men may not have as much business even being at 125 as Benavidez or Johnson?

They may be able to do it for a little while, but Dana White’s “all the best fighters in the world fight in the UFC” would be a null-and-void argument when it comes to the flyweights, because once Dana and Co. have to bring the axe down on some of the guys who will have run their course by that time, they will no longer have all the best flyweights in the world.

As far as fighters go, the current TPF crop—including Brazilians Giva “The Arm Collector” Santana and Jorge Lopez, new TPF featherweight champion Eddie Yagin, and WEC alumni Doug Marshall, and others—all bring individual interest and talent to what would be the next generation of mixed martial arts, and their's is a talent that cannot stay ignored forever.

One other thing to take into account: TPF is regional, even if it serves as a national supershow-promotion that showcases talent from all over the world and focuses more on top-notch action and being a proving ground for fighters who are looking to break on through to the big time.

If there’s one key thing that should be a no-brainer to all MMA fans, it’s that no regional MMA promotion ever tries to compete with the bigger shows.

The regional pro circuits—they do what TPF has been doing, because they know what they need to do for the sport to move one step closer to becoming widely accepted by the mainstream.

The sooner we take TPF seriously as a promotion that could contribute to the next generations of the next level of competition, the closer this sport could be to becoming accepted by those who may not be quick to accept it now, and who knows:

It’s possible that that regional fighter you’re not paying attention to now, rises to the top and leads the next generation of the “top-tier competition” as pound for pound the best damn fighter in the world, period.