DREAM's U.S. rep doesn't know why Gary Goodridge hasn't been paid

http://mmajunkie.comThe U.S. representative of Japan’s Fighting and Entertainment Group, which is the parent company of the DREAM mixed-martial-arts promotion, has no idea why veteran fighter Gary Goodridge hasn’t been paid.

And he isn’t happy with the situation.

“I didn’t sign his contract, but I’m sure it doesn’t say it takes a year to get paid,” Mike Kogan today told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “Obviously, there’s something fishy going on. I feel bad for the guy.”

Kogan hopes to get some answers when he travels next week to Japan for the K-1 Grand Prix 2010 Final 8, which takes place Dec. 11 at Ariake Colloseum in Tokyo.

“I’m going to find out what the hell’s going on,” he said. “I can’t speculate as to why he hasn’t been paid. Other fighters have complained, so obviously he’s not the only one. But they’ve all been paid since, and he hasn’t.”

Goodridge, who fought for FEG this past New Year’s Eve at “Dynamite!! 2009″ and suffered a first-round TKO loss to Gegard Mousasi, made headlines this week when he publicly called out the promotion and asked fans to lobby Kogan about the snub.

“I stayed quiet because I thought they were going to pay me, but I still haven’t seen a penny,” he posted on The Underground, a popular MMA forum. “I have bills I have to pay. I worked for the Japanese people for over a decade, and I never thought they would treat me like this.

“I was in rough shape before I took the fight against Mousasi, but they needed a fighter with only a week to go before the show, so I stepped up for the fans. Now they won’t answer my calls, and nobody will talk to me. I have had my lawyer and my manager call them, but they have not been able to get an answer.”

Kogan said Goodridge has contacted him directly about the problem, though he could offer little in the way of a solution.

“I think they should get paid,” Kogan said of the fighters with FEG contracts. “If they’re not paid, it’s wrong, whether it’s my employer or not that’s doing it. Fortunately – and I’m not using this as an excuse – late or not, they’ve always paid people. There’s yet to be a fighter that’s been flat-out stiffed. But still, it’s terrible.”

The likely culprit, he said, is not the promotion’s payment schedule, which often means fighters wait several months after an an event before receiving their show and win purses. Instead, it’s an issue of how much cash FEG has on hand. He admits there are fighters who have fallen through the cracks as a result.

“It’s no secret that FEG is in financial difficulties,” he said. “So I think it becomes prioritizing which fighters get paid first and which don’t based on their need or how they’re been used. There are event tournaments throughout the year. You’ve got to pay the guy that’s going to show up again in two months, or he’s not going to show up.

“I think the process needs to improve. A lot of things need to improve. But at the same time, nobody’s blinded by the truth. It’s not like anybody is under the illusion that this is normal procedure. It’s not. My bosses know it, too.”

With both ratings and attendance down in recent years, the Japanese fight promotion has been trying to raise additional funds through a recent partnership with PUJI Capital, an investment banking group, though the success of those efforts is unclear.

“There were days when FEG used to pay ahead of time,” Kogan said. “So obviously it’s not a general practice or policy. It’s just kind of necessary evil. At the same time, I’m not condoning it.”

A star of the UFC’s early days of no holds barred fighting and later in PRIDE, Goodridge (23-22-1) hasn’t won an MMA match in more than three years.

UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey is probably the greatest female fighter on the planet, which is a tremendous feat. So why are we seemingly so obsessed with arguing about whether she could beat up men?