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Outcome of today’s Zuffa/Couture court hearing (2/28)
By Zach Arnold | February 28, 2008
The judge (Jennifer Togliatti) ruled for further proceedings in terms of discovery (with that hearing set for March 6th). Adam Swift is reporting that the IFL will use the name Team Tompkins instead of Xtreme Couture.
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Yeah, it looks like they are changing the name from Xtreme Couture to Xtreme Tompkins because I went to IFL’s website about a minute ago and they got rid of the profile completely for Xtreme Couture. They will probably have a team profile for Xtreme Tompkins in a few days I bet.
Well that’s underwhelming.
Yesterday our lawyers appeared in Judge Togliatti’s Las Vegas courtroom to address the previously continued preliminary injunction hearing. After many hours of argument, the judge agreed to fashion a remedy (without any admission or waiver or affect on any date and event other than the February 29th IFL event) based upon what Randy Couture had already advised the court he was doing and /or more than willing to do (and had already taken steps to do): (i) That he had not planned to attend the February 29th IFL event in Las Vegas; (ii) that, given the foregoing, he was not cornering at the IFL event on the 29th; and (iii) that the team name “Xtreme Couture” would not be used in the February 29th event (for the reasons discussed below). We don’t believe that anyone with full-knowledge of the facts could consider this a victory. In fact, it is a non-event.
However, the background story is a little more interesting. Simply put, the IFL was attempting to use the “Xtreme Couture” name without properly representing the gym by using its own fighters.
On January 8 we submitted a list of seven (7) fighters to the IFL that would be available to fight in the IFL event from the Xtreme Couture gym. The fighters were: Dennis Davis 145lbs (16-8), Jay White Heavyweight (2-5), Phil Friedman Heavyweight (1-0), Eric Uresk 155lbs (2-3), Josh Haynes 185lbs (8-8), Johnny Hendricks 170lbs (3-0), and Karina Taylor 135lbs (0-1).
The IFL informed us that Dennis Davis would be booked to fight a prelim bout against Ian Loveland and that none of our other fighters would be utilized. According to the IFL none of our fighters were a proper matchup for Mario Sperry’s team of Brazilian fighters. The IFL intended to field a team of Benji Radach (who due to injury was replaced by Josh Haynes), Santino DeFranco and Lew Polley. Radach had been a member of Shawn Tompkins’ Anacondas team, while DeFranco and Polley are from American Top Team.
Lew Polley and Santino DeFranco are tremendous athletes and excellent fighters. However, they are members of American Top Team not Xtreme Couture. American Top Team is a great squad and by all means seem to be deserving of having their own team in the IFL. We have 35 athletes that train in our Las Vegas gym and proudly wear the Xtreme Couture patch on their shorts during fights. Yet the IFL decided to field a team called “Xtreme Couture” without putting any Xtreme Couture athletes on the team. The Patriots didn’t show up in the Super Bowl with a bunch of players from the Packers. Why would the Xtreme Couture name be put on the line and not be represented by Xtreme Couture fighters.
It is because of this that the team name was changed to “Team Tompkins”.
the UFC posted the most recent outcome of the court case on their website. And something tells me that site gets more hits then most of the MMA sites combined. Looks like they are pulling no punches for this one.