Rick Bassman Files Lawsuit Against WCO's Bruce Bellocchi
Chris Howie reporting…
In what becomes the next step in the saga of the cancelled WCO event on January 12th. Rick Bassman, owner of Valor Fighting and Management, has filed suit against WCO Promoter Bruce Bellocchi.
Bassman, who met up with Bruce Bellocchi back in October of '07, had some of his fighters fighting on Bellocchi's Nov '07 card. After meeting up with Bellocchi, who Bassman calls “charming and seductive”, discussions began about Bassman and Bellocchi doing buisness together to promote a card in January. The deal was that Valor fighting would be providing their license to promote events to Bellocchi so as to put on the January 12th show.
In short, the contract stated that the WCO would handle all marketing and pre negotiation with fighters to decide on their purses. Valor would be providing the license and be handling all production, something they had a lot of experience in. Financially, the contract stated that WCO would pay $20,000 to rent the license. Two main clauses in the contract were that WCO would cover all cost for the show and the second was that Valor had no financial responsibility for costs pretaining to the show.
All seemed well at first until it came time for the WCO to starting providing cash says Bassman “Bellocchi said when he spoke to MMANews that he never bounced a check before. That couldn't be any further from the truth. As will be seen in the lawsuit we file, Bruce was bouncing checks all over the place.”
Although Bassman felt that something didn't seem right after checks starting bouncing he says Bellocchi was able to make him feel secure “Bruce is so charming and seductive that he could make you feel liek everything was fine.” Everything that Bassman offered to Bellocchi he accepted and didn't question any decisions according to Bassman. When Bassman confronted Bellocchi and said he didn't think Bruce would be able to provide the funds, Bellocchi assured him that their would be no problems and that the funds would be there.
Leading up to the event things seemed to only be getting worse “Bruce fabricated a ticketmaster report showing that over 7000 tickets had been sold for the event when in reality less than 2000 were sold. Right from day one the ticket reports didn't seem right. The first day they went on sale Bruce said 800 were sold and then the next they the floor was sold out. It sounded good but I've been around the buisness for a long time and it seemed too good to be true.”
One of the reasons Bellocchi gave for the show not going on was his investors pulling out after running a background check on Rick Bassman “Bruce had also stated that the reason his investors pulled out were because they did a background check on me and they didn't like what they seen. What actually happened was that Bruce's investors found out the ticketmaster report was false. I've spoke to the investor and he informed me that he wouldn't have even had the time to run a check on me before they had pulled out.” Bellocchi's investor had actually found out about the fabricated ticketmaster report that said there were over 7000 tickets sold. There had actually only been 1040 tickets sold.
The difference between what Bruce Bellocchi has been saying and Rick Bassman's story would be that Bassman has factual records that are verifiable as opposed to Bellocchi's claims as to what happened. He has dates from meetings, emails, letters, bank documents. Although he comes out of the situation looking bad because the show didn't go on, he has the facts that show he wasn't to blame for this.
Had he allowed the show to go on and something had of happened he could have been responsible for 3 times the amount owing in checks as well as the chance of having to spend time in jail. Although the show didn't go on Bassman had too much too lose taking the risk to continue on and although he had exercised bad judgement he couldn't let himself be put in a worse situation.
What could have been a really great show never did get to happen and was cancelled the afternoon of the show. With no liquid cash available to pay the fighters, Armando Garcia put the kaibosh on the show. “I gave Bruce every possible chance to show proof he had the cash to go forward but the checks he had cashed before the show wouldn't have been available until afterwards and that was if the cash was even there at all. Armando came to me and said that he was taking the decision out of my hand and cancelling the show.”
It seems that although Bruce Bellocchi did everything he could to make the show go on, there was no proof that he had the cash to go through with it. His lies and track record made it difficult for Rick Bassman to believe in him anymore come the day of the show. It was unfortunate for everyone that had to miss out on this show (fighters and fans alike) but all that can be taken from this now is a lesson in what not to do when trying to put a show on.
This is also a story of heresay VS fact and with the information that Rick Bassman has in hand it should all come out in the wash as to what was the truth and what were lies.
Anyone looking to read the lawsuit that will be filed against the WCO and Bruce Bellocchi should be able to find it online over the next few days. MMANews.com will provide a link when it becomes available.
