Ken Shamrock had a vision, so turned it into a reality.
A Hall of Famer in both professional wrestling and mixed martial arts, Ken Shamrock has lent his physical skills to a variety of industries. Now in semi-retirement, Shamrock developed his own bare-knuckle boxing company, ValorBK, with no cages, fences, or gloves. With a goal to preserve the purity of bare-knuckle boxing, Shamrock hosts bouts with fighters from all over the world.
With the title promoter now under his belt, Ken Shamrock was recently asked what he learned from two other promoters he formerly worked under: Vince McMahon of the WWE, and UFC’s Dana White.”I think it’s just about having a vision and then putting the pieces together,” he told the Wrestling Perspective Podcast. “I think the biggest thing, which leads to me to my next shout out, is surrounding yourself with successful people, winners, people that you know that are going to be there and know what they’re doing and are going to put you put your business in the best place to succeed.”
Shamrock went on to explain the other moving parts that helped him fit those pieces into the whole picture. “I had a couple of guys that fought with me that were on the lines actually under a Jerry Bohlander, the Lion’s Den in Napa. Those guys were actually training under Jerry, and one of them was Matty Miranda, who is the guy that’s actually helped me build the business around this. Once he saw it, he was like, ‘Dude, it’s lightning in a bottle’. So he’s really structured the business to really put this out there so that people could see it,” Shamrock said. “Obviously, the vision was fine, but he put that business structure around it.”
“Then Todd Middendorp, who’s been, obviously fighting as long as I have, a long time, and now he’s promoted a lot of fights along with Matty, promoted a lot of fights together. So on fight night, he’s the guy that makes that wheel turn on fight night. So Todd Middendorp’s a really strategic partner for us to be able to get those fights to be able to run smoothly that night. Then Steve Griggs, who is our tech guy, who does a lot of stuff with tech, he’s been doing a great job putting the pieces together so that people are able to understand what it is that we’re doing and be able to go on these social media platforms and find out everything that we’re doing.
“Andy, who is another guy, a friend of Steve’s, who is really a genius at marketing. You’re going to see that when we start marketing our January 7th watch party. You’ll see the way that that happens. It’s just been tremendous to see some of the work that he’s done. Ted Kaye, who works in the music business, has been a music producer, manages a lot of musicians. He manages me, obviously has a lot of connections that’s been helping us through Valor, with his network.”
“Alex Nays and all those guys are in the NFT and the crypto world. They have great connections there and we’re looking forward to doing stuff in the metaverse. So there’s a lot of stuff going on. We’re not just staying in that niche that everybody’s used to seeing. Going outside the lines. We’re building things so that people are able to come and actually view this in all kinds of different ways. Nick, who’s our production guy, he’s got his own production. He’s out of Florida. He’s putting all the pieces together when it comes to actually getting it out to everybody, streaming it to people.”
Shamrock finished, reiterating the benefit of the “strong network” when cultivating an idea, such as ValorBK. “One thing I learned is just that it wasn’t those guys that were doing all the work. They had a lot of good people around them that were able to put them in position to be able to put their vision where they wanted it to go.”
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