Iowa Challenge reaches show No. 100, promoter says MMA slowdown over

Tonight a regional promotion with a history of grooming UFC talent reaches its 100th show.

Iowa Challenge won’t ever be the UFC, but for longtime promoter Chad Bergmeier, that’s not the point.

“I had no intentions on leaving the state,” he told MMAjunkie. “I never wanted to be the UFC. It was just basically a way to give guys a place to fight, and it was more of a hobby for me.”

Bergmeier still gets phone calls every day from new and experienced fighters looking to step into his cage. He even heard recently that an infamous opponent of Travis Fulton’s was looking to get back into the sport.

He shied away from putting on a rematch.

“The biggest thing is seeing all the different characters that have come through the doors,” he said. “I’ll get phone calls from people who say that they’ve never been beaten in a street fight. Usually, those are the guys that are one-and-done.”

Dozens of IC vets, however, have gone on to compete in the UFC. Current UFC vet Ben Rothwell got his start there. Jason Brilz, Lee Sandmeier, Mike Rhodes, James Giboo, Dave Strasser, Ron Faircloth, Nate Mohr and onetime UFC title challenger Justin Eilers first cut their teeth in the regional promotion before moving to the big show.

Iowa Challenge 100 takes place at 5 Sullivan Brothers Center in Waterloo, Iowa, and features a headliner between heavyweights Fulton and Steve Pilkington.

Fulton, who’s fought more than 300 MMA fights, reprises a role he first took 13 years ago when he headlined Iowa Challenge 1 in 2001.

“I had Travis fighting a guy named Jimmy Westfall, who was going to make the trip from New Mexico,” Bergmeier said. “I always thought you had to bring all these guys in from all over the place. It wasn’t just about local fighters. It was, the further you could get a guy, the better that looked.

“Westfall didn’t show up for the main event. We ended up getting Faircloth from Strasser’s camp, and Faircloth went on to fight Fulton and fight in the UFC, as well.”

For the first 15 events, Bergmeier held fights in a boxlike steel cage on loan from another pioneering MMA promoter, Monte Cox. Fighters were allowed to knee and stomp downed opponents, he said, and all you needed to be cleared to fight was a mouthpiece. Fights were comprised of one 10-minute round with a five-minute overtime if necessary.

Now, competitors are required to submit blood tests and a battery of other medical paperwork to be cleared to fight. Stomps were outlawed hours prior to an event featuring former UFC champ Dan Severn.

Iowa law once mandated that only two referees could oversee bouts held in the state, Bergmeier said. That rule was changed when one of them was caught in a snowstorm in Wisconsin.

Bergmeier, a former baseball player who once aspired to be a pro boxer, was working as a goldsmith in a jewelry store when he first began promoting MMA. He became a full-time promoter in 2005. Since then, he’s seen his share of ups and downs in the industry, and said a slump of recent years could be turning around.

“It was good in 2005 through 2007, in 2009,” he said. “Then it went downhill. But it sure seems like the first part of 2014, the numbers have been up again compared to where they were this time last year.”

Regional promoters have certainly felt the squeeze in a difficult economy, and even the UFC has occasionally seen faltering attendance. Some who get in to the business quickly figure out that building a cage and advertising MMA fights is a way to go broke very quickly.

Bergmeier, though, has kept his margins and managed to survive in several different markets. Sometimes he wishes he would have thought bigger with his promotion’s name. But when your lark turns into a career, you go with what you’ve got.

“I wish that I would have named it something that could have been universal wherever I went,” he said. “But that wasn’t my intention.”