“The Introduction of my MMA world”
By: Jeremy Luchau
This was supposed to be a Monday morning read… unfortunately with my schedule it was impossible to get the work done necessary to meet the deadline.
So, as you sit with a cup of coffee on a Thursday morning, or possibly if on the East Coast you’re on your lunch break, you’ll read this and think to yourself, “Who the hell is Jeremy Luchau?” And possibly, “Why the hell am I reading this?”
Fair questions.
Currently I’m an Entertainment Coordinator at the Tachi Palace Hotel and Casino in Lemoore, Calif., and I’m responsible for Tachi Palace Fights.
Trust me, being entrusted with a mixed martial arts promotion at Tachi is no easy job, as it is the former home to both World Extreme Cagefighting and Palace Fighting Championship. To say there are high expectations here is an understatement for sure.
You’re probably wondering what the heck does Entertainment Coordinator have to do with MMA? In a nutshell that’s truly what I do here. I coordinate the event from top to bottom. We don’t have many of the official titles you might be used to like “President” or “Vice President”, etc.
I helped develop the Tachi Palace Fights brand and bring it to where it is today. Each week I will be able to give you a behind the scenes look at what it is like to run an MMA promotion and not just from the top, but in every facet from matchmaking to venue setup.
But I can imagine this might get a little boring, so I will also talk about the people I’ve met, my MMA training, family and MMA products, etc.
A brief, and I do mean brief, time line of how I became involved in MMA might go a little something like this:
- April 2001, while working as a sports reporter at the Hanford Sentinel Newspaper, I was approached by then Director of Entertainment at Tachi Christian Printup about doing a story on MMA, which turned into to a weekly series called “Writer to Fighter”, chronicling my journey training for a pro MMA bout.
- Around this same time, I also started writing press releases and feature stories for Reed Harris and Scott Adams for the WEC.
- Oct. 18, 2007, and the WEC was gone, the Palace Fighting Championship (PFC) was born earlier that year and I made my pro debut with a 1:21 submission win over Michael Santumbaga.
- Worked with PFC on media and began to shadow Printup and matchmaker Richard Goodman.
- July 18, 2008, fell to 1-1 in my MMA career.
- In Oct. of 2008, I left the newspaper to work full time at the Casino.
- Bounced back on Sept. 19, 2009, with a win to improve to 2-1.
- And less than a month later on Oct. 8, 2009, Tachi Palace Fights had its first show.
Those are some of the high points, and a low point, to help you understand a bit of my background.
Much like all of you, I am an MMA fan first. Those are my roots in the sport. I didn’t come from an extensive martial arts background or have a college degree in business and look at the MMA boom as a way to make a quick buck.
I literally had no MMA experience other than sitting back and watching the sport grow from my couch with a bag of Cheetos on my lap and cup of ice tea.
And now I’ve virtually done everything there is to possibly do in the sport… fought, managed, coached, promoted, made matches, ring card girl.
I mean, I’ve dated a ring card girl. Haven’t you?
With this column I hope to bring some further awareness of the sport from not only a fighter and fan perspective, but maybe also from the “promoter”. Not to mention, I’d like to field any questions anyone might have about the sport. I’m all about interaction.
I probably will also vent a lot of about the family; I have four kids (only one boy) and a beautiful fiancée (the ring card girl).
And, as if all that wasn’t enough, I want to fight again. I’ve been out of action almost two years, but ready to start training again and get back in the cage.
I know, I know… maybe not the best idea, but I love it.
We just released our full fight card for Tachi Palace Fights 10 “Let The Chips Fall”, which takes place Friday, August 5th at the Tachi Palace Hotel and Casino.
Fans and the media have been buzzing about how great this fight card is, and I truly think that’s saying a lot looking back at some of the shows we’ve had over the last two plus years.
Matchmaker Richard Goodman and myself were really able to get a great blend of fights that the fans all over the world want to see and the fights that people in the Central Valley want to see.
I guess it wasn’t too hard other than dealing with the budgets. And that’s never the fun part of the job.
Looking forward to some emails and looking at my schedule it seems like Thursday’s would be a perfect home for this blog.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/jeremy.luchau
Twitter: @TheProject23
Email: [email protected]
Special Thanks: Tachi Palace Hotel and Casino (www.tachipalace.com), Fairtex (www.fairtex.com)
“The Project Files” by Jeremy Luchau will be an ongoing weekly blog series here at ProMMAnow.com that will give readers an inside look into the life of an MMA promoter. It is part of our ongoing series of exclusive content written by individuals involved in the mixed martial arts industry.