PRO ELITE & DREAM ANNOUNCE PARTNERSHIP

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PRO ELITE & DREAM ANNOUNCE PARTNERSHIP
Saturday, May 10, 2008 - by Damon Martin - MMAWeekly.com


At a pre-fight press conference held on Saturday in Japan for Sunday’s DREAM.3, officials from both Dream and ProElite, Inc. announced a working relationship between the two promotions that will include sharing of fighters and referees, as well as co-promoted shows in the future.

“In the last year ProElite and EliteXC and other brands have made a lot of progress, and some of our progress is due in part to our relationship with FEG and now with Dream,” said ProElite executive William Kelly. “We are sharing fighters. We are sharing referees. We intend to do co-promotions with Dream both in Japan and in the U.S.”

Kelly also mentioned possibly taking co-promoted shows between Dream and EliteXC to places like England and Korea in the future. He commented on the strong relationship between ProElite and television giants CBS and Showtime, and indicated that they will work to present EliteXC and Dream co-promoted shows on the networks.

ProElite also announced the intention of opening offices in Japan, with the hopes of putting on an EliteXC show there at some point in the future.

On the current Dream card set to take place on Sunday, two EliteXC fighters are already competing, as Nick Diaz faces Katsuya Inoue and Eddie Alvarez squares off in the second round of the lightweight Grand Prix against Joachim Hansen.

ProElite executive and former ICON Sport owner T. Jay Thompson also mentioned names like Kimbo Slice, Jake Shields, Robbie Lawler, and Jason Miller as other U.S. stars that the promotion would like to introduce to Japanese fans in the future.

DREAM.3 takes place on May 11 and will broadcast live in the United States on HDNet.