A former Canadian Football League agent has become a major agent with the biggest company in the mixed martial arts world.
Montreal-born Dean Albrecht, the son of the late J.I. Albrecht, a well-travelled manager and player personnel director who made headlines daily as the crusty managing director of the Toronto Argonauts in 2000, is doing big business representing top Ultimate Fighting Championship fighters in the U.S. and Canada. His stars include former two-time heavyweight champion Frank Mir, who is on the rise again.
Albrecht, a director of the Argos in 2000 and involved in the football operations of the CFL’s now-defunct Shreveport Pirates, manages some fighters and/or works with them solely on securing endorsements. He also works with billion-dollar companies wanting to partner with the UFC or its fighters and has been involved in TV deals for the UFC.
"It’s like having a management agency and an ad agency for sponsorships wrapped into one enterprise," he told sportsnet.ca.
One of Albrecht’s clients, Joe Lauzon, will fight on this Saturday’s card in Auburn Hills, Mich. Albrecht has two fighters on the undercard of the Dec. 11 UFC 124 card in Montreal featuring Canadian Georges St-Pierre against Josh Koscheck in a much-anticipated welterweight championship bout. On the Jan. 1 UFC 125: Resolution card, another of his clients Josh Grispi is in the featherweight title fight.
Watch two of the preliminary fights for UFC 123: Rampage vs. Machida at 9 p.m. ET on Sportsnet East and Ontario.
Albrecht, 45, is a successful businessman based in Florida with his company Quantitative Equity Research, which leases algorithmic decision and trade analysis. Because the business is self-operated, he can concentrate on his MMA/UFC business.
It began in the ‘90s when a friend of a friend asked him to help a fighter, Dave Beneteau, with a contract. Three years ago, Albrecht revisited his athlete representation business and delved into MMA, which he continued to follow after his association with Beneteau. He made a cold call to Mir, who at the time had been a former world heavyweight champion whose career was on hold because of serious motorcycle accident. Albrecht visited Mir, who is based in Las Vegas, and following a couple days they agreed to work together.
From Mir, he has expanded his network with top fighters. In the last year alone, he has handled the business management and contract negotiations for over 30 top-tier professional mixed martial arts fighters. His firm represents or has acted on behalf of or consulted to stars such as: former UFC light-heavyweight champion Quinton (Rampage) Jackson, for whom he did a significant endorsement deal; Miguel Torres; Michael Bisping; Kurt Pellegrino; world jiu-jitsu champions Demian Maia and Robert Drysdale; UFC star/ESPN analyst Stephan Bonnar; Stefan Struve and many more. His clients come from the U.S. the U.K, the Netherlands and Canada, notably Rory MacDonald of Vancouver, now training in Montreal.
Overall, he has 26 fighters in the UFC, or about one-tenth of the roster, and said the competition among agents is a lot more ruthless than football.
"It’s the NFL of the MMA," he said in reference to the UFC. "It does such a good branding it. The UFC is going to be bigger than the NFL in five years. I don’t think that’s an outlandish statement whatsoever. Wherever they go, they usually sell out within a couple hours and continue to go back to the same market and sell out. The sport is just starting to get legs, with regards to the younger kids and it’s exciting as hell.
"Think about it for a second: if you’re at a football game and a fight breaks out, what do you watch? The way that (UFC president) Dana White puts it, take a football field and on one quarter of it you put a football game and one quarter of it you put a baseball game, and one quarter of it you put a soccer game and the other quarter you put on a big fight. What are you going to watch? Everybody understands the fight. They’ve taken real fighting, plus made it entertaining. It’s fantastic.
"People are asking ‘why are you getting into the fight game when you’ve got all this experience in football? Your background’s in football and your father’s background is in football?’ I can go into football whenever I want. I can start tomorrow, and we probably will start up another company and include soccer, which I think is going to get bigger and bigger in North America. But with fighting I decided to really focus on that and get a really good business going. I’ve got a well-rounded client base. I’ve got a lot of young guys, and when it comes to the bigger deals we’ve done most of them. We’re positioned very well."
Albrecht is so taken with MMA he began taking jiu-jitsu three years ago to help him have a greater understand of the business. He’s won various amateur championships in the super heavyweight division, which is 225 pounds and above.
"I took it seriously because I wanted to see what these kids are doing," he said. "I train like an animal."
But unlike many of the top fighters, he does not have a nickname nor entrance music.
Not yet anyway.
