Martin Lewandowski: KSW working to cross-promote with Bellator, RIZIN

KSW CEO, Martin Lewandowski, says he’s working to cross-promote with Bellator and RIZIN for upcoming shows.

Las Vegas, NV – While some MMA promotions are busy competing with each other, KSW CEO Martin Lewandowski says he’s busy building bridges between the competition, instead of tearing them down.

“I’m finished with the kind of thinking that you need to fight with all these organizations,” Lewandowski told FanSided while attending the MMA Awards in Las Vegas in July.  “Of course, in Poland, it’s a different story because of the small market – or maybe it’s not even small, it’s small compared to the U.S. but still for more than 40 million people. It’s a huge market but small in the terms that there are some competitors, so you are just rivals. You compete and so there is very little cooperation between the organizations like the local ones. But when I think more globally, I have this kind of admission to sort of extend my brand and we did already a couple of shows outside the country.”

And Lewandowski certainly is thinking globally when he told FanSided that he’s in talks to cross promote with not just one huge MMA promotion.

“I’m working with Bellator and RIZIN,” he said. “We are exchanging fighters. We didn’t announce this fight, [but] they did because it was really unique. We exchange the fighters to the point when we are supposed to exchange the champions and that was always tricky. You rise this person to be a champion and then you want to give them to another promotion, who is going to earn all of that.”

Exchanging fighters is nothing new. The UFC and ONE Championship did it with Ben Askren and Demetrious Johnson and Bellator and RIZIN just cross-promoted their champions for a blockbuster series of fights that both went in RIZINs favor.

“With BAMMA, RIZIN, Bellator and Cage Warriors, there was always the time of ‘Okay, we exchange. No problem. You give me this, I give you that.’ Of course, the money issue was always an issue because I pay more for this fighter, but they want more money for the other fighter, so money was always a topic of discussion.”

Lewandowski also hinted that a potential huge cross-promotion with Bellator’s Scott Coker was being discussed but was tight-lipped on the details, admitting that it would be “huge,” if it were to happen.

“I’m in touch with Scott right now because I want one fighter from him for the London card, but he just came back from Europe so he needs a couple days, so he said next week,” Lewandowski said.

KSW is gearing up for a big 50th event show which takes place in London on Sept. 14, 2019, live from the SSE Arena. The event will be headlined by a heavyweight title fight between Philip DeFries and Tomasz Narkun.

Follow along with FanSided MMA for all your live results and highlights from KSW 50.