In our first ever interview, we persuade Noel Brooks, President of The Fight Mafia fame, to give us a few minutes out of his hectic schedule to answer a few questions about one of Canada’s premiere MMA apparel companies. The fight Mafia has sponsored top fighters like Sam Stout, Nate Quarry, The Diaz Brothers, Akiyama  and Dan Hardy.

Gymtops: How did The Fight Mafia get started?

Noel Brooks: People are generally surprised when I tell them. I have always been a huge fan of MMA and the UFC in general and have been interested in the sport since the early days. After watching on TV for well over a decade, I decided to travel to my first live event. That event was UFC 77 Hostile Territory in Cincinnati, Ohio and still to this day it is the most memorable event my eyes have ever seen. I was in awe of the whole weekend and I couldn’t believe how many MMA superstars I was able to meet just walking the streets of Cincinnati. One of those fighters being UFC Light-Heavyweight Houston Alexander.

After the event and one of the best weekends of my life, I returned home to Canada and researched on the internet some of the fighters I had met. At that time I stumbled across Houston Alexander’s official website and decided to email him. I stated that we had met in Cincinnati and I was interested in producing an entrance shirt for him which of course was a lie, but it was all I could come up with in order to possibly get a reply. I always had a fascination with MMA apparel especially the entrance shirts. My closet is full of fighter entrance shirts that have caught my eye.

One of my favorite parts of MMA events has always been what entrance music the fighters are going to choose and what kind of cool shirt are they going to come out wearing. A couple weeks went by since I sent the falsified email and I basically forgot all about it. Then one day I was resting in bed when my girlfriend woke me up stating that Houston Alexander was on the phone! I was shocked! He gave me his phone number and asked me to call him back later on that night. I rehearsed what I was going to say for a few minutes and called him back that night and basically faked being a MMA apparel company and said I was going to send him some gear and hopefully be able to provide him with his entrance shirt for his next fight. I was star struck and totally out of my element. After I hung up the phone, I basically saw this as an opportunity to start my own MMA apparel company which would be a dream come true for me. I quickly started to design a logo and came up with a name. Once I had a logo that matched well with the name I chose, I quickly put together a shirt design and had about 20 shirts made at a local screen-printing shop. The shirts were terrible! They were of such bad quality that I was truly embarrassed of them and figured I had really messed up. I virtually had no money to make any more shirts to improve on the ones I had already produced so I decided to send them to Houston anyways. Lets just say I have never heard form Houston since but I still keep his phone number just in case. Things have really changed since then but that’s how The Fight Mafia got started!

Gymtops: What inspires the designs coming out of The Fight Mafia?

Noel Brooks: Basically the fighters inspire the designs we produce. We see a lot of companies out there producing signature shirts for fighters where there is no personalization of the actual shirt. If a fighter has a nickname like “The Dragon,” there shouldn’t be diamonds and a shovel on the shirt, there should be a dragon. That’s what we try to do without being too corny. Chuck Lidell for example, if we were fortunate enough to do a shirt for Chuck, putting an ice cube on the shirt would probably not be a good idea. That’s when you have to use your talent and come up with something innovative and creative. We are a little simple with our designs, we like solid colors and crisp artwork. That crazy all-over stuff is nice but it’s just not us. Dan “The Outlaw” Hardy told me last week that The Fight Mafia’s gear is one of his favorites because it just fits with so many people’s styles. He told me that he loves our stuff because he doesn’t have to go out and buy a pitbull and drive a Benz to feel comfortable wearing our gear. I appreciate that and that’s the kind of things that inspire us.

Gymtops: Which Fight Mafia product is your favorite and why?

Noel Brooks: My favorite product of ours is our Sam Stout UFC 97 entrance shirt. It was our first real shirt and has so much meaning to me and my family. Our new Nate “Rock” Quarry shirt is awesome but Sam’s will always be my favorite. I don’t care what anyone says, if there were a prize for best MMA entrance shirt for UFC 97, we won that hands down! Everyone involved with that fight especially Sam stole the damn show and The Fight Mafia was put on the map that night and I will never forget it! I have only seen one shirt since then that popped on TV as much as that baby, and yes it still is my baby!

Gymtops: Can you decipher the meaning of the Fight Mafia logo for us?

Noel Brooks: The logo is pretty simple. The fist symbolizes the struggle, the fight that we all go through. Whether you fight or not, when people get mad or they get tough and want to get serious about things, we as a people make a fist. The bulls-eye on the left of the logo is symbolic of setting your sights on something and going for it. It also represents the fact that when you reach a certain level of success you will always have a bulls-eye on your head, someone aiming for you. M.O.B. standing for “Monarchy of Battle,” and obviously parallels with mafia analogies. There is strength in numbers and that is what we represent. We invented “Organized Grind” and that is what we want people to represent with our brand when they see our logo.

Gymtops: Who was the first professional fighter you sponsored and why?

Noel Brooks: Our first fighter we ever sponsored was Sam “Hands of Stone” Stout at UFC 97 in Montreal. We are a Canadian based company and Sam is a local boy who lives about an hour from my house and he is a hometown hero around these parts and it was just a good fit. Our budget at the time didn’t allow us to sponsor a main card fighter so we felt that Sam was a great fighter to go with. Although Sam ended up making the main card, he was supposed to be the first fight of the night on the non-televised fight and Sam did his job better than anyone else that night! Also to tell you the truth, another reason why we chose Sam was because he was the only UFC fighter who we could get in touch with in time for the fights but that’s a whole other amazing story.

Gymtops: If you could sponsor any other professional fighter, who would it be?

Noel Brooks: That is a great question. If my Mother had any say it would be Cris Cyborg. I love Cris too, that girl is the bomb and I am going to go on the record and say shame on you to all the magazines and all the media for never mentioning Cris Cyborg on your pound for pound best lists! Cris Cyborg is top 10 in the world pound for pound! Remember I said it first! Anyways, I would have to say probably Rampage Jackson or Cris Cyborg. Rampage is my kind of fighter and Cyborg is my girl, she is the best and still so young!

Gymtops: What plans are in store for The Fight Mafia for the future?

Noel Brooks:
We have big plans in our future, we are working on a TV show with an internationally known fighter to begin filming in October. We are heading to England for UFC 105 to support our boy Dan Hardy. We have a few expos we are participating in. New gear including shorts, rashguards, gloves, and kids items, etc. We have some new stuff coming out that is going to change the game forever! Stay tuned!

Visit The Fight Mafia website to learn more about their products.

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