http://www.thebullmagazine.com/bull21new/Mike.htm Where is the 2006 Charlotte Pro?
I've been asked, numerous times over email, "Why no 2006 Charlotte Pro?". A lot of rumors have gone around, I'll now give a full account has to what has happened.
Towards the end of 2004 I spoke with Tres Bennet. He heads up the NPC within SC. Through mutual friends we were able to hook up and discuss putting a top level pro show in Charlotte, NC. Pro-Hormones were coming to an end and I knew we would have some excess cash to reinvest into a new project. I thought, hell I can do a pro show, it can't be that hard. The planning process began and by the end of January 05, we were ready to go. The story that will follow is quite amazing. It will give you true insight into how difficult simple things can be.
Our first goal was to choose a location. After multiple trips to charlotte, NC we decided the Charlotte Convention Center (referred to from now on as CCC) offered us the most flexibility for our needs. During my initial meetings with them, I was told it would not be an issue to rent as much/little space as I needed. I spoke with every official including Curtis, a man who I would later want to throw off a building. The CCC had 280k sq/ft available for rent. I hired 2 people, Kevin Waggoner and Meredith Parker to help organize this event. Seth Meredith, my assistant was also brought in to help oversee the matter. My original plan involved a massive sports weekend. Our original plans included a national championship arm wrestling match, national level dodgeball tournament, strongest man contest, toughman contest, Budweiser jujitsu and the bb'ing/fitness/figure weekend. During the first 3 months of our planning we had been given the green light for renting all of the space within the CCC. During this time, leading up till March, we were in negotiation with the various organizations mentioned. We had signed two of them to a contract, Bud Jujitsu and Dodgeball. The Show of Strength in Atlanta had just been canceled and we were going right into negotiations with the strong man events. For our plans, we needed the entire 280k sq/ft the CCC offered.
It came time to put everything into contract that had been discussed. We had locked up the initial 80k sq/ft back in January. When potential tenants backed out of the other space, we were given the green light to take it all. I drove down to charlotte for our big contract signing that would finalize our financial obligation to the CCC. I met Ted (He will now be referred to as Mr. Prick) the actual head of the CCC. We showed him our plans which we had worked on every day for 2 months. It was then he dropped a sentence which I'll never forget: "You don't have approval to use all this square footage, why are you making all these plans?" I had enough anger in me that I could have easily thrown my chair through his face. I kept my composure as I'm not one to ever raise my voice. I calmly explained that we had been told by Curtis, the man that really runs the place, that there was NO issue at anytime with our needs. Especially given the fact it is prepaid and I was bringing a check to pay that day. Mr. Prick goes on to explain that I'm only allowed 80sk/ft and no more will be given because I'm a first time event. I explained that I had spent an enormous amount of money in employees and time planning this event. His response being that I should have rented the space first. I explained to this simpleton that given the fact I had spent 30k dollars preparing the plans before him and he is telling me no, what are the odds he'd rent the space to me with NO plans. He was unwilling to concede the building; I ended up with 180k sq/ft.
Now for our first big problem. With our space being cut, we only had space for 2 events outside of the bb'ing/fitness/figure. We had two events the dodgeball and jujitsu. These were our last 2 options from the 4 we had planned on running. We were now stuck, due to having signed contracts, to run our worst two revenue generating events. There was nothing we could do, but attempt to make the best of a bad situation. The dodgeball tournament had the most upswings. From research, if you held a large payout tournament, you could draw a lot of teams and at least recover your investment. We laid out a 30k dollar total prize purse for this tournament. I could turn this debacle into its own story, but suffice it to say that organization we went through stole our entrants, did their own tournament a week before ours and gave us no entrants. We hired them and paid them to bring in teams on our behalf. They never did such a thing. Having no assets or money, there was nothing to sue for. Due to that, we had to cut our purse way back and only had 6 teams show up. It was a total 100% failure.
The jujitsu was fairly successful, except for one thing. The person putting it on let everyone in for free; there went our admission fee's. It's hard to make any money when you aren't charging people. I gave the organization the space for free. In return, they constantly asked for more. We ended up providing tons of pipe/drape and tons of audio video. Sadly, at the end of the weekend, we weren't compensated in any fashion for this event. Live and learn.
Now came the bodybuilding aspect. I had envisioned what a bodybuilding show on a pro level should be. At that time, I didn't think it was right for these shows to be held in high school auditoriums, with crappy lighting and no room for the athletes to actually get ready. I still feel that way to this day. We had an 8k sq/ft pump up and dressing room area. Every person was given their own dressing room with mirrors, electrical outlets and any other items they may need. The fitness ladies had a padded area in which to practice any moves. Our stage was 64' in width, one of the largest ever used. A show two weeks previous to ours used too small of a stage and it was very problematic. There wasn't enough room for all the athletes at one time. Due to that, the athletes were lined up on the edge of the stage. With the lights shinning directly on them, one bodybuilder got sick and ended up yacking on stage. No doubt from the extreme heat from a light sitting 2' over his head shinning right on him for over an hour. Having seen this personally, I wanted to make sure the same didn't happen.
For our audio visual, we spent over 70k dollars. We had one of the best stages, the best lighting and the best video ever done at a pro show. Sadly, I don't know how to do something half-ass. With everyone rumoring that I would be unable to pull this off, I was determined to show the world what a REAL show should be like. We had 3 cameras that would film the show. Afterwards a DVD would be made to showcase the show. We just got the finished DVD’s the week of the Arnold.
Advertising. I believed that if advertised, a pro show would be able to draw a large crowd. Tons of people go to Columbus and Vegas each year, why not Charlotte, NC?? I put on one of the most aggressive advertising campaigns seen. We put full page ads every month in Men’s Fitness, Flex and Muscle & Fitness. We did a direct mail piece to over 60k bb'ing enthusiast (sp?) within a 700 mile radius of the event. We put flyers in almost every package that went out of our warehouse. We spent over 40,000 dollars in local/regional advertising. We even had Hooters debuting their 2006 calendar at our event. Every Hooters within a 50 mile radius advertised this fact. The week of the show I spent the majority of my time on every major local radio stations doing interviews about our show. The largest sports distributor in the country was dropping huge posters we had given them into outbound orders. This meant every store and gym on the east coast was hit with our posters.
While all of this was being planned, we were submitting drawings to the CCC for approval. Making sure nothing violated any codes to ensure we'd have no problems come show time. We submitted over 35 drawings which had been approved, then told they weren't approved a week later. It seems the CCC doesn't know its own rules. They began making up things that made no sense. We spent countless hours explaining their own rules to them. I've never dealt with such a large group of idiots. We wasted over 100 man hours doing their job. Come the week of the show, it turns out the CCC never submitted any of the drawings to the fire marshal. We now had to rearrange everything at the last second. On top of that, re-explaining the things the CCC was too stupid to convey.
Now comes the week of the show. We are pretty happy with ourselves as it seems everything is going to come together nicely. Then the shit just started hitting the fan. Europa Sports was a nice sponsor of our event. They were bringing a 20' box truck to the event. It contained all the items they needed for setup. Upon arrival they were told they couldn't bring the truck inside. I happen to be there when this happened and totally lost my cool. I belittled the ignorant moron that was attempting to explain to me that this truck violated fire code. Realize, this was the same person that gave approval to this truck being there 72 hours previous. She eventually told me that Curtis said they couldn't bring it in. I explained that unless they wanted me to drive our semi through the side of the building, I suggest Curtis come tell me directly to my face why that truck can't be in here. He came down and attempted to explain to me why it couldn't be there. When I explained to him how stupid his reasoning was, he finally said OK and let the truck in. Every aspect of the show was like this. If the CCC was involved it was a pain in the ass, regardless of what it was. Nothing a single thing was done smoothly, nothing. I had never seen a center work so hard to work AGAINST a paying customer.
We had the athletes meeting on Thursday night. Everything went amazing. I was able to talk and explain to the athletes everything we had done for them. The majority were very appreciative of what we had done, especially the women. The women were the most appreciative by far. They were all taken down that night to see the venue spot and most were taken away. It was a very impressive visual upon walking in. To hear the initial thanks and compliments really made us feel great. With all of the work we had put in, at least someone was going to enjoy it. Come Friday night, our turnout was very low - much lower than we expected. We knew Saturday night for the men’s show would be the big deal, but we had hopes Friday would still be OK. During the athletes meeting I announced that we'd have a live free webcast of the show, something that had never been done. We didn't make a big announcement about it at first, we weren't sure we'd be able to do it. Especially since the CCC was involved. It was really cool as a lot of the ladies were from overseas and their families were able to watch them compete.
Saturday comes around and once again, our turnout is way lower than expected. Rather than harp on the negative, I tried to remain positive. The ladies all came up on Saturday and thanked us for doing a show "right". I loved it. At the start of the finals on Saturday night, we had over 1700 people getting ready to watch the show on the net, I never expected that. Given I had only posted 3 days prior on the internet that we would be doing a webcast. The night show goes on with little problem. The athletes are paid as soon as they leave the stage, something not commonly done. My crew and I are totally wiped out and decide to come back early in the morning to pack up our items and get out of dodge. I had rented a condo near the CCC as a home office during this time. After eating with some friends, I called it a night. I had not cut my computer on for literally 3 days. When I signed on, I had an enormous amount of emails. Over 150 emails asked why I had canceled the Charlotte Pro. Obviously, I was quite confused as to what had happened. As it turns out the CCC told ticketmaster that my event was canceled. We had actually canceled the Friday night dodgeball event, that was it. They told ticketmaster the entire event was canceled. When people went online to check the status of our show, it said tickets were not available and it had been canceled. For people to get my email address they had to research who put on the Charlotte Pro, then navigate our website to hunt down my email. This told me that obviously there were a lot more people who had not shown up, but didn't know who to complain to. To say I was upset/angry/pissed would be the largest understatement of mankind.
The next day, CCC denied any wrong doing. The entire process had been so mentally and physically exhausting, I just let it go. I was happy to move on and try to forget about the entire episode. I knew we had spent a lot of money on the show. I had brought in an accountant during the summer to work full time in house. He is married to Jen Hendershot, the top ranked fitness pro in the world. Brian is excellent at his job. About 2 weeks after the show, I asked Brian how much we had spent on the show. Sometimes, having a good accountant isn't a good thing. I had gone into the Charlotte Pro expecting to lose around 100,000 dollars. I knew it was a first year show and that it would take time to build. That is why I wanted everything done first class; I had fully planned on doing a 2nd year. The final numbers had us losing over 340,000 dollars. As you can imagine, this astronomical number set us back quite a bit. Just 3 weeks after the show, we had the Mr. Olympia, which we were Co-Title sponsor of with MuscleTech. The outlay of cash the last 6 months of the year was almost too much for us. Due to that, when it came time to signup for 2006, I simply couldn't do it. My staff had been mentally and physically exhausted from doing it. Having to deal with the CCC was just too much. Had the CCC been willing to work WITH us instead of against us, I might have been more willing to at least do something.
In closing, I wouldn't change anything about what happened. Yes, I lost my ass. However, against all the odds my staff, in particular Kevin Waggoner stepped up and we put on a phenomenal show. Other shows took notes and implemented some of the things we did. This show proved to me that no matter what, if we put our minds to something, we could accomplish it. None of my staff had ever put on anything even remotely close to this. To have almost a flawless show once it got started, quite amazing. Now you all know the truth as to what happened to the 2006 Charlotte Pro.
