Business Spotlight – Brandon Quick of Newaza Fights

DALLAS, TX,  June 26, 2011 – Starting on July 30th, Dallas area instructor and frequent IBJJF competitor Brandon Quick will enter the promotional aspect of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with Newaza Fights, his newly-launched organization focused on bringing IBJJF-style competition to Texas and surrounding areas, year round.

As a service to our readers, we spoke to Brandon in advance of the Newaza Fights – Inception event to learn more about his new promotion, how they plan on doing things, and what their goals are as an organization in the near and long-term future.

Brandon, first of all, congratulations on beginning your journey with Newaza Fights and Combative Sports Entertainment. Why don’t you share a little bit about your martial arts background to give our readers some context on who you are.

I own two schools in Texas called Team Trinity – one in Waxahachie and one in Cedar Hill. We’re affiliated under Bruno Bastos and Nova União. As an academy, we were champions at the 2010 TX State Championships and have plenty of wins in other tournaments since we compete a lot.

As for myself, I compete regularly on the IBJJF circuit all over the country. Just think this year I’ve competed in Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Phoenix, Miami… I’m proud to say I’ve medaled at all the IBJJF Opens I’ve competed at and am also a silver medalist at the brown belt level in the No-GI Pan-Ams. I also stay involved as a referee at tournaments as much as I can and has run tournaments in the past, like the ‘King of the Mats’ tourney this past year up at UT Arlington.

Okay, so you’re heavily involved in the grappling community. How did you develop your passion for this sport?

It’s funny because I actually started out as a striker. I trained in Muay Thai a lot when I was a teenager and still love it actually. I jump in to spar with the guys every once in awhile but you know, there’s only so many ways to throw a right hand. Eventually it (striking) becomes all about timing and combinations. With jiu-jitsu, to me like it’s a lifetime of learning. Don’t get me wrong, striking is the same thing but I really feel like BJJ isn’t as simplified. Plus with striking, to get really good, you have to get punched a lot and that stopped getting fun after awhile.

Either way, I love the competition aspect, I love the coaching aspect, and I love the internal battle that we go through in a one-on-one combat sport. It’s different than baseball, football, and other team sports. Even tennis and individual sports like that, they have their own battles but when you’re grappling or striking…  it’s a lot more intense within yourself when there’s a fight involved.

Having been a part of the grappling scene in those various roles you mentioned, what do you perceive as state of the grappling scene here in Texas right now?

That’s a great question. Before I was here, I was living in Hollywood in Los Angeles, California. So-Cal has long been the Mecca of BJJ in the United States. Being a guy who does tons of traveling, I‘ve seen a lot of places but I’d definitely say Texas is second only to California now when it comes to the BJJ and grappling scene. It’s growing rapidly and there is tons of quality here. Just in Dallas for example you have Travis Lutter, Carlos Machado, and Bruno Bastos along with a Robson Moura affiliate in J.D. Shelley. Alliance’s first American black belt in Allen Mohler is also here and it goes on from there. Then you down to Houston and you have Draculinho and Travis Tooke to go along with Chad Robichaux, Sam Hoger, and all a ton of other quality guys. Then in Austin and San Antonio, you have Rodrigo Pinheiro, Marcello Salazar, and other schools like BTT, GFT, and Relson Gracie…You can literally go on and on and name everybody all over the place if you wanted to. The point is that there are tons of quality black belts here in Texas and the amount of talent is only growing. Because of that, there are so many new tournaments now and everyone’s trying to get a piece of the action. That’s great. All the more reason to have quality standards in place and keep building a higher level of jiu-jitsu to push the sport forward.

Speaking of more tournaments, it was recently announced that you’re entering the business yourself as an event promoter with Newaza Fights. How did that decision come about?

Some time ago, a couple of good guys approached on starting a professional MMA organization. We’re going to do that by the end of the year but in addition, we also decided to do jiu-jitsu tournaments with the goal of building a standardized platform to help grow the BJJ and grappling here in Texas. In a nutshell, that’s how we started with me, Robert Curry, and Jamie Pierson. We’re all partners in this thing. Robert and Jamie are in charge over at Throwdown Sports Group and I’m president of Newaza Fights.

As a new organization, what are some of your goals both near-term and in the future as far as what you hope to offer to the MMA and jiu-jitsu community?

We hope to bring up the level of both MMA and grappling. I already mentioned a lot of the stuff we have in mind for BJJ but we also want to raise the level of MMA shows. There have been some good ones in this state but there have been plenty of pretty awful shows too – You know… No VIP section, nothing but fold-out chairs, and the venues smells like beer and piss. Really just really trashy overall… I’ve seen shows shut down by the commission because promoters decided to mop a vinyl floor in between rounds, causing the fighters to slip all over the place and risk serious injury. There’s no place for stuff like that.

We’d like to elevate this sport to a certain standard when it comes to everything from the ring girls to the production to how we take care of fighters. I know what it’s like to compete and have teammates training like Olympians to get ahead in this sport. These guys deserve to get taken care of correctly, get paid correctly, and everything else. We realize that’s a lofty bar to set and we know it will cost money. We may not be profitable right off the bat but we’re going to do the right thing from the beginning. The dollar signs will come eventually if we do that. Build it right and go from there is what we are thinking.

As far as future goals, one of them is eventually landing on a network like HDNet for our events. As far as really long-term, to be honest with you, our goal is to get bought out by Dana White and the UFC one day because we’re such a quality venue for fighters, fans, and the sport in general. That’s probably the main goal.

Let’s talk about your upcoming tournament in Dallas on July 30th. I see you have some pretty big super fights lined up. Tell us about that aspect of it.

It’s one thing we want to do with our jiu-jitsu tournaments. If people are paying $10 to come in as a spectator, we want them to get their money’s worth. With this one, we’re going to have Bruno Bastos, who’s a third-degree black belt, a four-time world champion, and about to be a returning ADCC veteran, fighting Roberto “Tussa” Alancar from Gracie Barra, who’s a three-time no-gi world champion and an ADCC guy himself. Then in the gi, we’ve got Rodrigo Pinheiro, who’s an exceptional champion based out of San Antonio. He’ll be fighting Daniel Garcia from Nova Uniao who just won Brazilian nationals down there in Rio.

Are these type of mega-fights something you plan on doing on a continual basis? How far reaching of a talent pool do you hope to pull from?

Yes, it’s going to be the standard for sure. We would like to put on even more of them. In fact, if you’ve ever heard of the Professional Submission League… that’s the kind of stuff we’re planning on doing down the road. Nothing but big names, the best competing against the best in a straight-up super fight tournament. Something worth streaming or putting out on DVD.

As far as Newaza Fights – Inception… bottom line, why should people register and what do you want everyone to come away with after this first event?

Hopefully the fans will enjoy the super fights, the competitors will enjoy grappling in a tourney with safe rules, the online rules meetings save everyone time (videos already online), and everything else that we will be bringing to the table.

We want to help develop the sport and help it become more organized. We believe in the IBJJF in their views as an organization and share their goal of grappling eventually making it to the Olympics. We want to push it to that goal with the way we structure and organize our tournaments. We’re going to follow the IBJJF standards and do the same with the no-gi aspect of our tournaments as well – like the one we have coming up in October. It’ll be a belt-ranked no-gi tournament just like the No-Gi Worlds. I don’t think anybody else is doing that right now.

Bottom line, If you register with us, you’re going to know what type your bracket starts exactly, you’re going to have high-level certified referees who know what they’re doing, and it’ll a professionally-ran tournament. You’re not going to have amateurs or some high school basketball team sitting there behind the tables and running the numbers for a sport they don’t even know. You’ll be able to have comfort in the quality of the event and just worry about competing to the best of your ability. That’s it.

Being such a new promotion, is there anything else you’d like to share with the MMA/BJJ community?

For us, this isn’t a one-time deal. We’re here to stay and already have events planned for October and December along with MMA fights coming up so we look for us to bring a high standard and lots of positive energy to the community, along with great sponsors like Gameness and DOM Fight Gear. We definitely look forward to sharing all that with you guys.

How can people get more information about your organization and upcoming events?

You can find us online at www.newazafights.com.

Registration for Newaza Fights – Inception on July 30^th is now open so I encourage you to check us out, participate in our first event, watch some world-class guys compete, and enjoy the experience as we continue to push combat sports forward here in Texas.