Kind of seeing that blueprint and the need for a training center that would not only have all the equipment you need to train for fights, but also was interested in creating a staff – under one roof having a guy with a Brazilian jiu-jitsu background, another with a Muay Thai background, boxing guys, wrestling people that can not only teach classes in those individual disciplines and teach the public classes, but also help the professional fighters train. They would no longer have to run all over town to get those pieces and styles for the puzzle of MMA. They could come to one place and get it all under one roof.

My wife helped me considerably find a location and dial in all the things that we needed; and I started pulling in fighters – obviously all the guys already training with us wanted to be there. So we started finding the staff that was going to run the place, and we wanted to pay the fighters to teach the regular classes because that’s why people want to be there – to rub elbows with the real fighters, like Jay Hieron and Mike Pyle and Gray Maynard. You get to see Forrest Griffin maybe training once a twice a week in there.

Being a fighter, first and foremost I didn’t like that this guy was going to train you in jiu-jitsu and this guy was going to train you in Muay Thai, but both of them want ten percent of your fight purse to be your official trainer – everyone wants to dig into your pockets. I didn’t really want to do that with the Xtreme Couture gym. We decided “you know what, these guys are members just like everybody else.” Just because they are a fighter we’ll give you that two hour block of training from four to six everyday, and obviously you can come in and use the equipment anytime you want, but other than that pay a membership like everyone else. So instead of taking from their purse they just pay a membership fee like all the other members. I think that that took a bunch of heat off having to negotiate with each individual fighter that wanted to make that their training home and just make it an environment about training and pushing each other and helping each other out. It started with us at the top and the way we wanted to run the place and trickled down to the brand new fighters coming in getting their feet wet who just decided that fighting is for them. So it created a unique environment that was in a nicely run facility, and a lot of people are using that model for what an MMA gym should look like.

PDG: Your gyms have gained a lot of attention, everyone knows about them. Now when someone says they are training at Xtreme Couture it’s immediately recognized as one of the top places you can go right now. So at this point what is that like for you – it’s been a very short amount of time? Randy: We’ll have been open for one year this February. So in a short amount of time we have five training centers open, and of those five the Vegas gym is sort of the center, corporate model.