Podcast Alert: Rich Franklin – ONE Championship

Transcript

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Rich Franklin: [00:00:00] You’re learning those things about discipline and refinement, and basically just making you the best version of yourself that you can be. And that is what One Championship as an organization embodies, not only, uh, to our athletes themselves, but the employees as well, and as an organization.

Anne Ristau: Welcome to the Navigating Sports Business Podcast.

I’m your host for today, Anne Ristau, Executive Vice President of Consulting at Navigate. We started this podcast to showcase some of the incredible people that we get to interact with every day and the impactful work that they’re doing in our industry. We hope you learn something about them and something from them in our conversation.[00:01:00]

Today, I’m happy to be joined by Rich Franklin, Vice President at One Championship, the world’s largest martial arts organization and Asia’s largest global sports property. Rich, thanks so much for being here today.

Rich Franklin: It is good to be on with you. I’m, I’m wearing your Michigan blue today, so.

Anne Ristau: I love it. I wasn’t going to start with Ohio.

Rich Franklin: Yeah, even, even though I’m from Ohio, I’ve now realized the mistake that I made with this color, but it’s all good.

Anne Ristau: I love bringing in the Michigan Ohio state rivalry. It does feel good. actually get into a fair number of Navigating Sports Business podcasts, but that’s what makes sports fun. But for today, we will spend most of our time talking about One Championship, which Chatri, the founder and CEO joined AJ on this podcast about 18 months ago.

A ton has happened at One since then. And we’re also very eager to talk to you and [00:02:00] talk about your unique background as a former world champion mixed martial arts fighter and now executive. So really looking forward to it. We’re going to start with One. And I have to say, for our listeners who aren’t yet familiar or aren’t super familiar, One is the largest martial arts organization in the world.

It is among the world’s top five global sports properties for viewership and engagement. It has a cumulative reach of over 400 million fans and is broadcast in 190 countries. With the roster of athletes from 80 nations, I have to say, Rich, like, I read all that and it is mind blowing to me. You have incredible reach and skill, yet I feel like you’re not that well known.

Is that true or is that just an American perspective?

Rich Franklin: Well, I think it’s an American perspective. When you say those who are not familiar with One, if you have an interest in the combat sector of sports and you don’t know who One Championship is at this point in time, you’re I would ask you what rock you have been living under.

We’ve made our first [00:03:00] foray into the United States. We had our event on ground in Denver last year. And so perhaps some of the U. S. fans are still not, mainstream fans are still not familiar with us, but the people that are in the know are in the know. They know what kind of excitement, what kind of action we bring to the table and the level of the athletes that we have in our organization.

Anne Ristau: And talk a little bit about One because it’s not just mixed martial arts, you cover a range of disciplines and you also cover both male and female athletes, correct?

Rich Franklin: Yeah, when you talk about the combat business, and that’s why I’m careful about my word selection sometimes, because we’re not just an MMA company.

What is quite popular right now in the United States is mixed martial arts, because that’s what’s fed to them. But when you look at One Championship, the differentiating factor between us and Other organizations on the plan is that we not only have matches in mixed martial arts, but we do high level grappling matches.

We have high level kickboxing matches. Some of the best Muay Thai and kickboxing fighters in the world on our roster. And so not some of the best, actually the best with the athletes that we pull in. So what you [00:04:00] see when you have a show with One Championship is not just an MMA show. It’s truly a mixed martial arts show.

So to speak is like one match might be an MMA match. The next one might be a Muay Thai match. Another couple of MMA matches. A kickboxing match for the end of the night. And I mean, there’ve been times where we’ve had boxing matches as well, but it’s truly a, a mixed event that evening. And that’s one of the differentiating factors between us and the other combative platforms on the planet.

Anne Ristau: And thinking about your rest of world, and especially in Asia Pacific, your dominance, talk a little bit about the values that One Championship also is founded on.

Rich Franklin: When you talk about values, you talk about the values that you learn when you’re practicing martial arts. You know, it’s like my father put me in martial arts when I was a young kid at the age of I don’t know, I started training about the age of nine, I think.

And this wasn’t what I did my entire youth, but part of that was learning not just things like discipline, cause my father was disciplinary and he did not have any problem with that in his household, but you learn things about like honor or respect and humility and integrity and these [00:05:00] kinds of values that you learn, like in that traditional martial arts sense, at least when I was a kid, and these are the kinds of values that you learn when you step into any martial arts school today.

You know, I just came off the, uh, jujitsu mats earlier. I was helping my instructor teach a class. We were just teaching some techniques from Butterfly Guard today. And, you know, you’re learning those things about discipline and refinement and basically just making you the best version of yourself that you can be.

And that is what One Championship as an organization embodies, not only, uh, to our athletes themselves, but the employees as well and as an organization.

Anne Ristau: And now, here you are in North America. You debuted, uh, last May in Denver. Can you talk about that first event and how it went?

Rich Franklin: The first event was a great event, and I think one of the most surprising things for me with that, with the first event was the reception that some of our foreign athletes received.

Earlier in this interview, you talked about how maybe it’s an American notion that people don’t know who One Championship is, but if you were at First Bank last year, when we actually had that show and when Stamp was [00:06:00] introduced, when Rodtang was introduced and the ovations that they received from the fans, it was really cool seeing that from my lens, at least.

Having been in the business, both as an athlete and now as an executive, because we’ve done so much work on the other side of the planet that has crept into this side of the planet, but that was our first show. So to see that kind of reception was confirmation that we are doing way more in the United States than, uh, we could have even possibly imagined at that point in time.

Anne Ristau: And now this year you’re back. You’ll have two events, both Denver and Atlanta. Tickets have just gone on sale. What are your expectations for 2024 in the U. S.?

Rich Franklin: So we have Denver, September 6th and Atlanta, November 8th. Tickets went on sale for Denver. They have not gone on sale for Atlanta and the opening segment of ticket sales.

So we’ll be broken our ticket sales down into segments. We have a team that’s working on that. That is not what I specialize in for the company, but they basically broken it down [00:07:00] in segments. And our initial segment of ticket sale in the opening was better than expected. So I was recently in Denver, actually traveled there with some of the U.

1. team and we went to Ball Arena where we’re having the event. That’s where the Denver Nuggets play. And I just stood in that arena and was like, wow, this, it’s, it’s a huge arena. It’s a mega arena. Standing there watching that game, but knowing that we’ve already had a good start and filling that stadium, it’s going to be exciting to see that stadium full this year.

Anne Ristau: And what is different or, um, unique about One Championship from UFC or other promotions that already have been in the U S market?

Rich Franklin: Well, you know what I said before about the fact that you’re not only going to see the best, some of the best MMA in the world, the best kickboxers, the best Muay Thai athletes.

So on and so forth down the line. I think what really makes us different is once you actually attend an event and see what it’s like compared to going to another sporting event. It truly is like sports married a rock concert, that kind of entertainment level. We have each of the athletes have a customized walkout with an [00:08:00] LED screen.

All the graphics and music is customized to the athlete, to their walkout. And so things like that, that put a nice touch on the show. You get so used to operating in this company that you forget how good the events that we put on are until I was listening, I was actually listening into Joe Rogan’s podcast.

And some of the gentlemen had come from there, had attended our show, and they were just describing the show like, man, it was crazy just seeing how they, they build this LED stage and all the walkouts are customized. And I thought like, wow, I’ve become so desensitized to this. I’ve seen it so many times that I forget how special it is.

So sometimes I have to step back. At the show and kind of take the show in for the actual entertainment value because I’ve just been in this business so long that you forget and I think that’s a big differentiating factor is that when you come to the stadium and actually witness this event in person, it is something different.

Anne Ristau: That’s exciting. What are you personally most looking forward to of having two U. S. events this year?

Rich Franklin: Well, let me just take a step back for a second and just say, like, I’ve done [00:09:00] so many different jobs for One Championship, like in a company like this, you wear so many different hats and I kind of straddle this line between executive and talent sometimes with the things that I’ve done.

Sometimes I’m sitting in a boardroom or, or a business meeting and helping the teams with sales and whatnot. And sometimes I am sitting in front of a camera doing commentary and I do pretty much everything in between, whatever I’m asked to do, I’ll do. And so, my main role right now with One Championship is working with the U.

1. commissions, gaining approvals in the various states for our rule set because you know, to talk about what’s different between us and between the other organizations and something that I failed to mention is that we also, we have a different rule set for our Mixed Martial Arts Fights, which in my opinion makes for much more exciting matches.

And that’s something that we could talk about. I won’t get into that now, but I’m primarily working with these states. And so what I’m really looking forward to is coming in and we’ve already had one show in Denver, but going to another state. And watching that state see [00:10:00] how well we run an event, how smoothly it is to work with us as an organization, you know, as a business.

And then from there being able to build in 2025, because we’re already starting to lay out our 2025 schedule. And so the number of events from 2024 will, will increase. So that makes my job exciting because it keeps me moving around and accomplishing things. So that’s from a, from a working perspective, that’s what I’m really looking forward to because I know that once we do Denver and Atlanta this year, then eyeballs are going to turn our direction.

And there’s going to be a hunger for more. I think from a fan perspective, it will be nice being in that arena again. I’ll, I’ll be more than likely sitting in the commentary booth. Most likely that’s what I’ll be doing that evening. And it’d be interesting to see what kind of reception in this Ball Arena, which is bigger than the arena we did last year in Denver, what kind of reception the athletes that we bring are going to end up getting.

Anne Ristau: From a business process standpoint, how long was that to get your rule set approved and to educate all the folks who needed to be involved? And was the second one easier going from Colorado to [00:11:00] Georgia?

Rich Franklin: Yeah,

no,

it, it varies from state to state. Georgia was really easy to work with. They were. Open to the rule set and looking for alternative rule sets. At One Championship,

like we believe that competition, you know, you’ll hear Chatri this all the time, like the duopoly within the combat sports that, you know, there’s One Championship in the UFC and it’s kinda like Coke and Pepsi and you know, he’s a big believer and there being this competitive business because competition only breeds a bigger business for everybody altogether.

One group of which that that benefits from that, in my opinion, is the athletes, because now the fighters have varying organizations that they can work with and compete with as far as like paydays and things like that. So you’re going to see that it’ll improve the ecosystem of the business all along.

But Colorado was easy to work with to begin with. They were looking for something there, their statutes and state laws allowed for them to adopt a rule set quite easily. Georgia, on the other hand, I had to go in and I don’t know, I don’t know if I want to say prove my way or convince or whatever, but it took a bit more of a sales pitch with them, had to [00:12:00] give them some data on how the rule sets vary from one to the other, primarily when you’re working with an athletic commission, what they’re primarily interested in is one, your event is going to bring revenue to the state.

And number two, you’re running a safe event. And those things are not in that particular order. Like they want to make sure that you’re running a safe event. Obviously that’s what the commissions are set in place for. But it took a little bit of convincing with Georgia, we convinced them and so moving from there and we’re just, we’re continuing to grow.

You’re going to see new locations in 2025. Yeah, it’s exciting.

Anne Ristau: And also the last time when Chatri was on Navigating Sports Business Podcast, he and AJ talked a lot about the Prime Sports Deal, which at that time was new. I think it would just had started in 2022. Has that achieved your objectives and what has that broadcast meant for your fan base in the U.

S.?

Rich Franklin: I think it’s meant, I mean, tremendously for in the U S I mean, the barrier to entry for Prime is that you’re not behind any major paywalls or anything like that. So, and Prime is invested in a ton of sports properties right now. So that [00:13:00] puts one championship is one of the primary sports properties that we’re invested in.

So for us as a business, It’s been really beneficial for us. Like we’re, you know, we’re moving along and performing exactly the way that we want to with Prime. So that’s, we’re headed in the direction that we need to be. I think for us, obviously, has it achieved our goals? I guess the best way to put this with a company like one is we always have moving goalposts.

Once you get to that goal, it’s like, here’s our goal. But by the time we reach that, the goalpost has already moved here. So to answer your question, no, we haven’t reached the goals yet. And we probably never will based on that philosophy.

Anne Ristau: You did though, add Sky Sports in the UK very recently. We did. So you’re continuing global expansion?

Rich Franklin: Yeah, we did. And we have heavy on our roster. We have several, uh, athletes from the UK, guys like Liam Nolan and Jonathan Haggerty that command and have the ability to, uh, bring fans and sell out shows on a broadcast and bring the ratings in that we need. So that’s, it’s a good system for us all around for Sky Sports and One Championship.

Anne Ristau: What are your current goals for One Championship in five years, knowing that they may [00:14:00] move even bigger?

Rich Franklin: You know, when Chachi was on, he talked about us in the next several years, doing 12 events on ground in the U. S. And that’s what I would like to see. Our expansion in the U. S. kind of, it really starts with the work that I do because.

If I’m unable to get approvals in states, then we don’t have locations that we can go to. Now I’m just one small step in a pyramid of many big steps, but like I am that first step. And so my personal goal, and I guess the goal of the company is to fulfill that statement that Chatri said and be able to have these 12 events on ground in the next several years with varying locations all over the United States.

I think if we’re doing that. It’s going to affect the entire ecosystem, everything from stadiums to revenues to ratings on Prime video. You know, you can’t affect one variable without affecting all the variables.

Anne Ristau: You mentioned starting at a young age. Did you want to study martial arts or was that your dad wanted you to do it?

Rich Franklin: No, you know, as a young kid, I started, I got into sports when I was in elementary school. I started playing football when I [00:15:00] was eight years old and pretty much I played that sport all through high school. At one point in time, my dad put me in karate as a kid, just because we watched like a Kung Fu theater after church on Sundays, you know, we’d come home and watch that.

So I always loved martial arts as a kid. And so I did that for a few years. It wasn’t something that I thought that I was going to pursue full time as a job. I went to the university of Cincinnati here in Cincinnati. And majored in education, secondary education with a dual major in mathematics. And so I taught high school math.

And I thought that for me and my family at the time was just going to school and getting your degree and being able to choose a career like that was a success. Now, what had happened was in high school, I got back into martial arts and then I was training and really I was just doing it as a hobby, just.

You know, as I was saying before, I gone to the BJJ class, the jujitsu class earlier today, and it’s all about like, just refining oneself, becoming the better version of yourself. And that’s what I did when I was, when, you know, when I was in high school and college, and then my senior year of college, one of my friends [00:16:00] dared me to take a fight and I just had a local show.

Keep in mind the status of MMA. Like there was no business really of MMA in 2002 or 2000 or 1998 is when I took my first amateur fight. Yes, I am that old. And so it’s just as one of those things that was like hobby, but I happened to be really good at it. So by my fourth year of teaching, I was kind of at this crossroads, like, well, do I want to give this a try?

And so I decided to leave my teaching career to try this whole time.

Anne Ristau: Your students must’ve loved it. Although maybe you inspired fear and did they get their math homework in?

Rich Franklin: Yeah, I would say that the, uh, the, the rate of students that did not turn their homework in on a regular basis was fairly low. I will say this all kid aside, you know, when you have parent teacher conference nights as in, like, as a high school teacher, you typically get about a 25 to 35 percent turnout rate with your parents.

And because. You know, and I, and I wasn’t competing in, in large organizations at that time. I was just coming up and this was a brand new sport at the time. It was new to [00:17:00] people, but my, my classroom was probably like, like a 95 percent turnout rate to parents cause they wanted to meet this fighter teacher that all the kids were talking about.

It was pretty cool.

Anne Ristau: And if it had a great outcome of better math grades, all the better for it. I mean, that’s a tough job.

Rich Franklin: I’ll say this, you know, that was at a time and I find the work that I do with one championship paralleling the ecosystem or the, I guess like the atmosphere of MMA at that time, you know, keep in mind, like I quit my job in 2002 as a teacher.

And this was at a time when John McCain was calling like mixed martial arts “human cockfighting”. And so I found that some of the work that I’ve done with One Championship internationally, like I’ve gone from one country to another explaining what mixed martial arts is. You know, because when we first entered a country like Thailand, Muay Thai is, it’s not only culture there, it’s basically religion.

And so when you come in with a different martial art, people have no clue what this is. So it’s like, once again, I found myself like educating people on what, you [00:18:00] know, like doing the same job I was doing earlier in my career. I’ll say this though. The beautiful thing about when I was teaching is that even though this was at a time when people like John McCain was calling mixed martial arts human cock fighting, I worked in a district where the administration and even the teachers, I never had any backlash.

I mean, there were times where I was teaching and I would come in with a black eye or stitches or something like that. And there was, it was never an issue. People were just curious. So I never really received any kind of true opposition from the professional side of my life.

Anne Ristau: And you didn’t just teach high school math, you also did a lot of mentorship and work with at risk youth, correct?

Rich Franklin: When I quit teaching my full time job, I mean, as a high school teacher, you’re always working with that kind of stuff. You’re working with different groups in schools and staying after school and helping kids. But when I quit my full time job, I actually began working in an at risk program that was tied into the district and I was just doing that several days a week, you know, once my job was finished.

But there came a point in time [00:19:00] where I had to actually really focus on solely fighting. Otherwise, you know, when your job is avoiding getting punched in the face, if you’re distracted outside of, of your training, you end up getting punched in the face. Probably not a good thing. Yeah, exactly. So you got to kind of focus in on things.

Anne Ristau: All right. So you focused and you had an amazing career with UFC, including a fight against Ken Shamrock that really put you on the map. What went through your head when you realized you had knocked him out?

Rich Franklin: You know, I was in shock. That’s probably, I am not much of a celebrating athlete. Like growing up, I used to watch Barry Sanders play football and he always, when he scored a touchdown, like he’d always just mean your mission.

So you should be, you gotta be, you gotta be a Lions fan. Right. So you understand, but how many times did you see Barry Sanders spike the ball? Maybe like two in his entire career. He just gave the referee the ball. Like as if, like I expected to make it to the end zone. So just take this from me. And that’s kind of how I acted after every match, except for the, the Ken Shamrock match, because that wasn’t, [00:20:00] I say this about any fight career.

You typically have two or three really crucial matches that can take your career one direction or the other, you know, winning or losing. And that was one of those fights. It was basically like a must win because had I not won that fight, my career would have, my career trajectory would have gone a completely different direction.

So it was quite exciting. Plus you keep in mind that when I was first introduced to MMA, Ken was one of the guys that I really enjoyed watching in the, at the very beginning, because he was, I would call it gen one, generation one of a true mixed martial artist at that time, you know, that he was fighting at a time where it was like boxing versus karate or jujitsu versus, and he was someone that kind of mixed everything together and he looked like a Roman gladiator.

So, in essence, I was kind of fighting one of my heroes. So it was a bittersweet and surreal moment.

Anne Ristau: And then how did you make that shift from being in the octagon to becoming an executive? And when did that happen for you?

Rich Franklin: [00:21:00] It, I’ll be honest, making that shift wasn’t easy for many reasons. Like, as a competitor, you always stay competitive.

And my first, like my first love will always be competition. And so walking into the arena and being like, wow, this is over for me. That is, it’s a tough pill to swallow tougher for some people than others. I mean, you know, I was at a point in my career where I was ready. It was time for me to be done. What was the more difficult thing for me was that I can remember for the first probably year and a half, maybe even two years working for One Championship.

Every time I sat in that arena, whether I was commentating or if I was doing something else. I had the same feelings that I had when I was competing and being in the arena and I absolutely hated it. And it took some time to actually be able to disconnect myself from that and, and say like, I’m not here for that.

But interestingly enough, now, when I do commentary work for One Championship, there are times where we’re getting ready to go on air and there, you know, we’re, it’s like, we’re heading to prime and you know, they’re like five and I’m just standing there, [00:22:00] I’m like. I’m bouncing like, all right, let’s do this.

Let’s do this. Almost as if I’m standing in the cage, getting ready to, to unleash.

Anne Ristau: And now you’ve been really on the executive side for almost a decade. You’ve, as you talked about, you’ve been in broadcast, you’ve been in leadership roles. How do you juggle all the different hats that you wear? And what do you like about being on the business side?

Rich Franklin: I mean, for me, it’s, I don’t know, I guess me juggling all the hats that I’ve had to wear for the company is, that’s not the difficult part, I guess, because it kind of falls back on my, my mixed martial arts training. Like, you know, sometimes in an MMA match, you’re, you’re boxing, but sometimes you’re wrestling and sometimes you’re kicking and sometimes you’re submitting.

And so you have to be able to do all these things. And I guess maybe that’s just kind of, I’ve been trained that way, or it’s part of my nature or whatever that I can just shift and move. And I think that honestly, Chatri probably recognized that in me as, uh, an employee to begin with knowing like [00:23:00] he probably understood my psychology and was like, this is how we have to keep this guy, uh, motivated to do things.

So, you know, it’s like, I’ve, I’ve had phases and I would say the most interesting phase that I had for One Championship was running the, uh, the warrior series that we did where I was traveling and shooting, basically shooting like a travel show and recruiting talent, which is where we actually, I found Stamp on my very first taping.

For the one warrior series. And so brought her into the organization, which was really cool. But, you know, even with a job like that, like one of the coolest jobs I’ve ever had, but you get to a point where it’s like, okay, I have to switch to do something that feels a bit more, I don’t know, meaningful maybe.

And so now working with the athletic commissions, like I understand. And I guess like for me, I’m a pressure player. And so if I don’t succeed with these states, then there are no shows. And so it comes down on me and I think that for me personally, I really. I operate well when the pressure’s on. I mean, that’s what an athlete does.

It’s like, you’re either a playmaker or you’re not. And so I just, I guess I’d like to think of myself as [00:24:00] being the playmaker. So when the company says to me like, hey, Rich, we’re going to need you to step over here and do this thing. And whether it’s just. for a day or if it’s, that’s my new role. And I’m like, okay.

Anne Ristau: Talk a little bit though about your chapter in recruiting both athletes and even on the business side of One Championship, that must be pretty interesting. And particularly in the athletes, what do you look for besides the, you know, technical abilities.

Rich Franklin: I, for me, if I’m looking at an athlete, like, I always say it like this when I’m in the gym, I want an athlete who’s willing to just walk through walls.

If I’d say, go do this, then there’s no questions, you just go do that. Because technique can be learned. Heart is one of those things, like in my opinion, either you have it or you don’t. And so there are certain things where like, if you just have heart and you’re just that no quit attitude, that’s just how you were,

were raised and it’s something that you, you learn at a young age. I always tell people like there are two types of like kids in where you take a three year old and you say to your three year old, like, listen, you’re [00:25:00] not allowed to have these cookies and you take the cookie jar and you put it on top of the refrigerator, one three year old would be like, well, I can’t get to the cookies, so I guess I won’t have any cookies day.

And the other three year old would be like, now how do I get those cookies off that shelf? And then they’ll start like sliding a chair over and climbing up the chair. And right. And so. And it’s like, it’s that kid that, that has that no quit attitude at this young age or has been taught that at a very young age that as they get older, it’s like, that’s the kind of athlete that I’m looking for.

So I, and I’ve always said this, like in my career as a competitor, I would rather face an athlete that was a super technician, but was lazy about his training in camp than someone that was ferocious about their training, but just like average technique. Because when you’re standing in front of someone that just doesn’t ever go away, man, it’s tough to beat that person.

So I can always take that person that has that heart and then, you know, refine them into someone else. There was a period of time for One Championship when I was running the warrior series and Chatri, it was crazy at the time, he said, I want you to go build a [00:26:00] production team and go tape this travel show.

And I have zero experience at the time in production, other than, you know, I’m very inquisitive and I’ve been in this business a long time, and so anytime I’ve been around TV production, I ask a lot of questions, but trust me that in no way, shape or form makes you qualified to run a show. But for what, you know, he, I think he knew that like, I’d figure out a way to make this thing happen.

And so once again, I built a team, I surrounded myself with people that knew more about their positions than I did. And so once you do that, I think when I was building this team, because I ran a team of 15 people and all 15 people that I selected all the way down to my executive producer, my right hand man, to just anybody on the team, they were willing to walk through walls.

Anne Ristau: Yeah, that grid is impressive as you are expanding globally, I’m sure traveling all over the world, creating new products, new production capabilities at every turn. That’s incredible. And your athletes, of course, have, I’m sure, very demanding schedules. Just to [00:27:00] be at the level of competition.

Rich Franklin: You know, one thing that Chatri has done really well with this company, as you can see in the leadership positions, like the people that get appointed, he uses the word rock stars all the time.

And so I’ll steal his word for this, but it’s like one championship really is made up of a lot of rock stars in each of their respective positions. So when you think, you know, something like I’ll step into a world of, of production or whatever, and then we’ve hired this new executive producer and you see what they’re capable of doing.

It’s like, wow, you really own this craft at, at a level of mastery. And Chatri has done a good job of filling people in key positions across the company for that kind of stuff, which is a testament to why One Championship has had the success that it’s had and why the growth has happened since the last time he was on the podcast.

Anne Ristau: Ula, is there a job at One Championship you haven’t had yet that you’d love to tackle?

Rich Franklin: I get to do all the cool jobs. So if there’s one that I haven’t had, then I’m like, well, I’m probably not interested in that job.

Anne Ristau: All right. We’re going to go into some of the rapid fire to wrap up.

Rich Franklin: Okay. Let’s do this.

Anne Ristau: What was your most memorable time when you [00:28:00] were competing? Moment or fight?

Rich Franklin: How rapid does rapid have to be? I’ll try to make this as quick as possible. Keep in mind, when I decided to quit my job, my dad graduated college the same year as me. And so I told him I was walking away from my teaching career.

And I, I really believe he wanted to punch me in the face and had it been for something other than fighting, he probably would have. But when you fast forward several years later, my dad came to Las Vegas to watch me defend my title. And he told me how proud he was for me pursuing my dreams, even though there were naysayers, including himself, not because he didn’t believe in me per se, but just the industry and the whatever.

He was really proud of me. And that is the biggest moment, one of the biggest moments of my career.

Anne Ristau: Oh, I think that’s an amazing life moment besides a career moment. That might take one of the other questions, so long as great.

Rich Franklin: No, you can, you can go ahead and ask me that question. I can come up with a different answer for it.

Anne Ristau: All right. How about favorite movie?

Rich Franklin: Braveheart would rank among my favorites. Book of Eli with Denzel Washington, you know, is another good one. There’s scenes in each of those movies, particularly when [00:29:00] William Wallace gets, Mel Gibson gets dismounted from his horse by Robert DeBruce. And when he realized he’d been portrayed and there’s this scene where he doesn’t say anything, but the acting in that scene, like the look on his face and the way he says something without saying something, that movie is so good.

Like, it’s just so many things I can talk about that movie. I can give you the long version, but that probably won my top.

Anne Ristau: What about favorite Jim Carrey movie and two part do you still get mistaken for him?

Rich Franklin: Oh, Lord Mercy. Favorite Jim. I’ve been mistaken for Jim Carrey since I was in high school. I’m gonna tell you a funny story.

I do occasionally, but not so much anymore. Just I guess the size difference, you know, like I look so much bigger. But I was in Las Vegas one time, I was defending my title and I walk into this health food store and I needed a piece of fruit and I needed a bottle of water. And so I walked into this health food store, me and my team, we were out shopping, just like passing the time, you know, my boxing coach and I say, don’t fight the fight before the fight.

So we would always do things to keep our mind off of the fight. I go into this health food store and I’m getting ready to check out. And the lady says to me, [00:30:00] she goes, oh my gosh, I’m a huge fan. And I said, thank you. You know, we chatted. She said, could I get ?

Anne Ristau: Wait, were you kind of famous at this point?

Like you’re already winning championship.

Rich Franklin: Yeah. I’m like, my face is plastered up and down the strip of Las Vegas Boulevard. So I’m like, oh, I really appreciate, you know, appreciate the support and everything. And then, and then there was this lady stocking shelves and I’m getting ready to sign the paper and she goes, that’s Jim Carrey.

And I was like, You know, I’m not Jim Carrey, right? And she goes, oh, whatever, Jim. And I was like, okay, Jim . So yeah,

Anne Ristau: that’s amazing. If she thinks she should know that could be a one of one special autograph.

Rich Franklin: No, there’s a few of them out there. Cause it’s not the only time it’s happened in my life.

Anne Ristau: All right. What’s the first thing you do in the morning?

Rich Franklin: Pray.

Anne Ristau: Last thing you do before bed? Wow, very good.

Rich Franklin: True story, yeah. I’ll tell you what, first thing I do in the morning is pray, the second thing I do in the morning is read my Bible. And the second to last thing I do at night is read my Bible, and the second to last thing I do at night, or the last thing I do at night is pray.

Anne Ristau: All [00:31:00] right, what’s the moment you’re most proud of, unless it’s the one you just talked about with your dad?

Rich Franklin: You know, I don’t know, it’s weird when we talk about this kind of stuff because, I don’t I try to stay humble, but when I start talking about being proud of things in my life, like, you could walk around my house here and I don’t have a belt out.

I don’t have any kind of trophies. I don’t have my college degrees on my wall. Like I have nothing, I have zero ego to wall. And my philosophy on life is like, you can have a trophy. I can have my Hall of Fame trophy. I can have my belts out. I can have my college degrees. I can have any accolades, any awards I’ve won, but like life isn’t about what I did yesterday.

It’s about what I’m going to do today. The impact that I have on people. And so I’ll give this as an example. I was asked to attend this alumni event at a local high school here in Cincinnati on Friday night. So I went. And then just, I attended and they introduced that I was there. And obviously I’m in my hometown.

So there’s a lot of fans here and many of them are alums. So they’re within my demographic. And after it kind of started, people started mingling and it was like 800, [00:32:00] 000 people at this event. And. I’ve had a half a dozen people come up to me that night and say, you know, something to this effect, like you really represented Cincinnati well, or you were a good role model for my kids to look up to.

Like someone that I could say like, hey, listen, here’s a good sports role model for you to look up to. I think that is probably something that I will, if, if pride or had being proud of myself or something, that would be it. And I don’t even want to harp on those kinds of things because I am an imperfect

human being And if I had, if I threw all my sins out on this table, I would be trying to cover them up as quickly as I could because It would be embarrassing, but all that is to say that to have that kind of impact with people. When I first got into martial arts, you want your legacy to be like, man, I’ll just the greatest champion ever, the toughest, you know, this, that, whatever, untouchable.

And then at the end, I’m just like, I just want to make sure that the little ripples become waves at some point in time that I left an impact on people.

Anne Ristau: I don’t think there’s any better legacy than to inspire others. So that’s an incredible one. All right. I got a [00:33:00] math teacher one. Do you have, pi memorized out to any specific number of digits?

Okay.

Rich Franklin: Oh, man, 3. 1415926 and that’s about it for me. Yeah, it is.

Anne Ristau: That’s farther than I could get. So I thought that was good.

Rich Franklin: Yeah. I mean.

Anne Ristau: The last one is, what are you most looking forward to professionally, personally in the year ahead?

Rich Franklin: Well, you know, I’m, I’m working with some states right now and, uh, I, I seem to be making good headway with those states.

And I think that once One Championship comes here, I think that if you and I were having a discussion midway through 2026 about One Championship in the landscape of the United States. It’s going to be significantly different between the states that I’m acquiring the approvals in and the shows that we’re going to put on this year.

There are going to be a lot of American eyeballs turning this direction. The nature of the conversation that we would have a year and a half from now will be significantly different than this one, and that’s what I’m looking most forward to.

Anne Ristau: Fantastic. We’ll take that as a next 18 months update will be due [00:34:00] since it’s been just about that since Chatri joined us.

Rich Franklin, Vice President of One Championship, thank you so much for being with us here today.

Rich Franklin: It’s nice talking to you Anne, thanks so much.

Anne Ristau: Same, take care.

And once again, this is Anne Ristau with the Navigating Sports Business Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us and please stay well.