05/14/2025
This week’s Promoter Spotlight features Matt Vogt and Jay Paulson at Med-City Fighting Championships. Tickets to their May 31st event may be purchased at www.nitrotickets.com/mcfccombat
“Well, the idea for MCFC came about from a thought I had about how it would be funny to have various folks in Rochester, MN, box each other. For example, someone from Kwik Trip boxes someone from Casey's. Someone from Olmsted Medical boxes someone from the Mayo Clinic. Then I thought as a fight fan it would be kickass if we could start a fight promotion in Rochester. Since there hasn't been an event for more than a decade, the area needs some exciting events again.
So, I got to work figuring out the logistics of starting a promotion like getting a cage and reached out to Jay Paulson (co-owner). Jay said he had been looking to get something going for promotion as well, and they say the rest is history. Then some studying of the landscape and what people did and didn't do well and how we would be very different. We got what we needed to set up a show.
We had our first event in January 2023, and it was a blast and a hit. The venue was blown away by how well we ran our first event. Which certainly didn't go unnoticed, for good and for bad. Then in 2024 we did our 2nd event and had a good time last year with that. We got an even bigger event this year and some stellar amateur and pro fights. For our 2nd event, we had someone make it to the major promotions. Which, typically, you must be national for that, and we are regional and did it in our 2nd show. Which was the first with pros.
Ultimately, we want to put on the best fights we can and have better events for fans in attendance. In addition, we wanted to have better PPVs since we saw a ton in the regional scene have atrocious quality, and we really stepped that up and, you know, made sure they worked. We also made sure they worked globally and weren't overpriced. Which a lot of shows tend to be. We also wanted to make sure the access to our fights was easily viewable after the event. With our reputation with fighters and quality of product, it can be said we have already conquered Minnesota. We wanted to be better for fighters overall. In addition to that, be a better option for pros promotionally and monetarily. We do plan to go to other places and do eventually do multiple shows a year eventually. We have some plans for something we want to do this year, but we shall see. But we aren't done shaking up the scene, and at the end of the day we are having a ton of fun doing it. We can also say we have international aspirations, and we already have people asking us to come to other countries and we will do that someday.
A lot of the success we had, it must be stated, was because of Jay. Jay is a former fighter himself and a coach. We wanted to make sure that we treated fighters well and were the best in the area at doing that, and he was a key part of that and building the relationships with coaches and fighters we did as fast as we did and making sure we were doing right by fighters.”
