The story of Ondřej Novotný and Pavol Neruda is known today to almost every fan of combat sports. Together they borrowed £40,000 for the OKTAGON MMA project and quit their jobs to start promoting MMA, which they did extremely well and their story continues to this day. A small startup has become a European colossus in eight years, now targeting large football stadiums. What is the value of the OKTAGON MMA organization now?
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Ondřej Novotný and Pavol Neruda founded the OKTAGON MMA organization in 2016 and borrowed a total of 40,000 pounds (approx. 1.2 million) to get started. “We were so determined to pursue our goal that we didn’t even think about it. It was something like: ‘Okay, how much money do we need? We can get so much money from sponsors, we need this money for this etc…’ We had to take out a loan. We didn’t think about it at all.” reveals co-founder Palo Neruda for the English server Sun Sport.
It all started with a reality show in the style of the traditional UFC project The Ultimate Fighter, where Czech and Slovak fighters clashed in a TV show. The teams lived, trained and ate together before facing each other in the very first live OKTAGON 1 tournament in Prague’s Královka. It was such a success that only a few months later, Neruda and Novotný were approached to sell “their baby”.
“One person approached us and wanted to buy OKTAGON, basically nine months after we started. He offered us two million euros. I was thinking: ‘What the fuck!’. It was crazy, but mine and Ondřej’s dream was much bigger, you don’t want to sell it for 2 million euros and leave it to someone else. We said no and he used his €2 million against us to fund a rival organization (XFN). It was a small organization, but he put his money there.’
In the meantime, the rival organization XFN disappeared and most of their stars landed in OCTAGON. Since then, OKTAGON MMA has been growing stronger and has established itself as one of the leaders in European MMA. Neruda, who bravely turned down nearly two million pounds years ago, can now breathe easy knowing that his bet paid off. “I think it could be £100 million (2,965,000,000 CZK), if we went public. I think it might be the total value,” added Palo Neruda.
