Elite MMA Origins: By Chris Fig

by Craig Boyle Created on December 23, 2013 Updated on December 2, 2022

ELITE MMA manager Chris Fig recalls the early days of MMA and the founding of his company. The London based manager pulls no punches and tells it like it is. See below. I always get asked how Elite MMA agency has come so far, and I've now been asked by one of our top sponsors FightstorePro to write a weekly blog on our day to day running. I ain’t that good at writing as I finished school at 13 but education don't have to come from books if you know what I mean. Anyway here I go. I’ve always liked exciting sports having raced Motocross bikes from 10 years old and I still ride my boys KX 85 monster for fun at the weekends I remember watching the UFC at the very start and thinking I'd love a bit of that but a few things got in the way. Then about 10 years ago when my boy started kick boxing at 6 years old, I had a feeling I wanted to fight MMA. I had been watching the old school UFC for many years and so I thought I'd go train with one of the best gyms in the UK, London shoot fighters. London shoot was based in Bard street west London in them days and I'd travel up there from East London every day and just take the class and get a feel of the gaff .It was a rough place down an alley and in a lock up , in the summer the sweat would drip off the ceiling and in the winter the rain would piss through the roof Haha. Anyone who has trained at London shoot knows its a very tough MMA gym and it had and still has a strong fight team with the likes of UFC fighters John Hathaway, Karlos Vemola and another fighter I know who has been signed only yesterday so I cant say their name till the UFC announce it, anyway it was tough and once I told the coaches I wanted to fight pro. The heat got turned up and I got into some wars and got put in the deep end to test me out and yeah I got it hard in sparing but anyone that knows me will tell you i would always go back for more. It's funny cos now I manage a lot of the boys that used to train there. So it was now 2008 my pro fight I wasn't bothered about the fight thought I had it in the bag unfortunately I lost by TKO , in my changing room was Karlos Vemola and he was the fight after me , it was his 3rd pro fight and after watching him fight i knew he was legit. I kept in contact with Karlos and we became good pals, I would go to his fights all the time and watched his career grow. I've always had an eye for a bit of business and thought I'd rather try and manage some fighters and see how it goes. Around Jan 2009 me and Pan Symeou ( a top criminal lawyer) decided to start to manage our first of many fighters Karlos Vemola and from that Elite MMA agency was born. It works really well cos Pan deals with all the contracts, accounts and finances while I get to do the fun part dealing with all the promoters around the world and all the fighters ... business is good. From 2009 to the end of 2013 we now manage 28 pro and only 1 semi pro fighter who you will definitely hear a lot about in the next 2 years that’s Dominic Wooding who is already 5/0/0 at just 17 years old, watch out for him. We deal with all the top promotions around the world like the UFC, Bellator, Superior challenge, KSW Poland, cage warriors and many more .Its a very busy agency ,we get contacted by fighters from all over the world and deal with everything for our fight team , we are a tight firm and look out for each other like family. By Chris Fig