How did you come up with the concept for the UWF and how did it all come together?

One day I was sitting in an urban hip-hop club with a couple of my bodyguards, and they were taking to me about how they like wrestling and they still watch wrestling. These are guys in their mid-20s and 30s. So I started to take a poll. I went around to guys in the urban space and asked if they watched wrestling and their kids watched wrestling, and I found the answer being a much bigger yes than, for example, MMA, even though MMA is a such a hot category in all forms of media. So I then started to poke around with some folks on the wrestling side and said, “What would be the reaction to this?” Then I started talking to rappers and program directors at hip-hop radio stations and record label guys. And lo and behold, I started to lay the building blocks … put a few dollars in, talked to some of my old ECW production sources. And I collected in a lot of media favors – I have involvement in two TV studios, one in New York area and one in Miami – so it makes the cost very agreeable. One of my head writers and producers has put stuff on TruTV and MTV2 in the wrestling space … and there’s a writer who has worked on some women’s wrestling programs. We went to the rap world to get some artist deals, and my wrestling guys went and did some open calls to get new and exciting wrestlers from all over the country that could do the craziest of the craziest, the wildest, the most insane stuff that has never been done in wrestling. We put on our first ring event on June 3 at Manhattan Center.

Who are some of the talent that’s involved, both on the wrestling side and the music side?

Some of the guys on the wrestling side that would be known are Homicide, Rich Ortiz [formerly Ricky Ortiz in WWE], The SAT, Murder One, Ruckus. On the hip-hop side, there’s Melle Mel, 40 Glocc, Uncle Murda, Cuban Link, Brisco, Billy Blue, Red Café, Big Block and others.

What is the role of the rap artists? Do they actually get in the ring?

They are absolutely in the ring in an interesting way, both in terms of persona and music. Let’s look at how traditional professional wrestling is: There are the wrestlers, there are the girls who are the femme fatales or the assistants, and there are the alleged managers and owners of the promotion that actually appear in the story lines. What we decided to do is take them out of it, [although] we do have girls that have appeared in major rap videos. On the artist side, we got actual hip-hop artists that were willing to work with us in the right promotional and economic framework. These guys would give us a song of theirs that would become their entrance song, so their music was tied to their character. When the character came to the ring, he was representing his hood or his block – as we say, the ring is the new block. The rapper is the shot caller, as the street term is used, and the wrestlers become his goons or street workers or thugs, and it becomes the urban lifestyle played out in the ring. We like to say it’s the video game “Grand Theft Auto” in the wrestling ring. … The artists get into the feuds and the street altercations in and out of the ring. The heavy lifting is done by the wrestlers, but they get a little pushing and shoving around in the process. Some of them are in some wild and crazy scenes.

In traditional pro wrestling, there are babyfaces and heels. Is that the case in the UWF or is it more shades of gray rather than clearly defined good guys and bad guys?

I would not say there are defined good guys and bad guys. You’re repping you street; you’re making your money in the ring, on the street, in pay-per-view. It’s, “I don’t want to get pushed off my corner by some guy from some other place.” It’s the classic hood/urban feuds.

It sounds as if the UWF isn’t exactly suitable for the entire family.

That’s correct. Our pay-per-views are TV-14 – language and violence. There is no question that we are not for an 8-year-old boy or girl. We feel a couple of things. Number one, there is a place for the old ECW wrestling fan as well as the fan that would like the ECW style of wrestling who wasn’t around then. But moreover, I think this is going to be driven by what I’m going to call the urban culture fan or proponent, who may like wrestling as a secondary entertainment medium. I use this example: You have a freckle-faced white kid in Des Moines, Iowa, a locale as far away from the hood in Opa-locka, Miami or East New York Brooklyn, but he still wears his baseball hat cocked to the back or the side, baggy FUBU shirts and branded sneakers that he saw an urban legend wearing. So in my mind, that kid is as much a potential fan of this as a kid off the corner in East New York.

You have you first pay-per-view on Sunday. What are your plans for the UWF after that?

We taped the ring environment for three pay-per-views. The out-of-ring fights and other things continue to be taped. We have another pay-per-view in September, which is footage that is partially in the can, and one in November. We have a three-show deal with the largest of the pay-per-view networks, iN Demand, and we’re on DirecTV, Dish, TVN Ent., and others for the first one. We expect to be shooting all through the fall, and then potentially in October-November, we will shoot our next series of shows, which will be January, March and May of next year. And hopefully by the end of the second quarter, we’ll be prepared to do something live in the second half of next year.

Looking long term, are there plans to try and get a TV deal?

Already in the works. A bunch of licensing guys have already come to us. We already have a clothing license deal with one of the major providers of rock music-licensed clothing. We have a deal for DVD and digital distribution signed. And we already have been approached by a couple of guys in the broadcast and reality show space, and we’re talking to a couple major agencies on sponsorship and branding opportunities. So as crazy as we are, there already is some interest in what we’re doing. I want to build this thing off pay-per-view; I want to create the legend first. If you go to regular television first, whatever your concept is, there is a ceiling in the type of behavior that can get on traditional broadcast or even traditional cable or even premium cable. To go where I’m going, I must be on pay-per-view, and even there I’m breaking through the glass ceiling. There’s some stuff people are going to see that have never been seen on wrestling.