Challenges: PLL, Front Street

Bo Krsmanovic is thrilled to be fighting Amanda Righetti. She's heard all about how tough "Big Red" can be, but she wants to find out for herself. (We fear she may be getting more of an experience than she expected, but we're behind our brave young welter.)

Autumn Reeser
Communications Director
Pretty Little Punchers Inc.

Unfortunately, Bonzo, Katy's going to be otherwise occupied on this PPV. (We got the other offer first, but, I'll let that manager announce it.)

Well, we couldn't turn down the opportunity. That being said, by the end of this month, we're going to have a decision on our future in the welter division. It's either going to be "all in" or "all out", no more dabbling. We're either going to treat welter like every other division and go after the belts, or we're going to get out of it entirely. And, if we decided to stick around, we'll look forward to working with you.

Well, sorry you feel that way. I hadn't realized exactly how long all this had been going on, but, when I looked it up the other day and realized it was two and a half years, well. A decision has to be made. And, that decision will go one of two ways. Either we'll go all in at welter, or we'll release Utgaard and McKinney, lock Perry in at light, and concentrate on the other three divisions for however long Front Street remains an active stable (and, we hope that's a very long time). 

I think you need to add Bazz to that list, because he's shown repeated interest in welters over these years. As for Front Street, it was conceived, eight years ago, as a four-weight stable, the idea being to compete at a high level in all four. I had particular interest in welters back then, because many stables weren't competing in the division and there wasn't a lot of action in it. I thought that, perhaps, we could help rejuvenate it. Unfortunately, we got to a point in 2015 where we no longer wanted to play in the welter sandbox the way it was then configured. Rather than just make an irrevocable decision, though, we kept our options open, simply because we did not want to put ourselves in a position where there was no going back. In those two and a half years, we've made a few forays into the division, testing the waters if you will, but they've never turned out to be very comfortable, so we've gone right back to one foot in and one foot out. The problem, though, is we have two young welters in McKinney and Utgaard in which there's a lot of interest. This is the absolute opposite of where we were two and a half years ago when we left the division. When we took Sobieski out, no one cared, because she was so damaged, no one wanted to fight her and no one would have touched her with a ten-foot pole if we'd have released her. Now, though, we've got girls other managers want to fight and might well sign if they were to become free agents. So, it's not fair to hang on to them and keep them out of the sandbox where the top girls play. We have to either release them or begin full-time welter participation. And, right now, I'm not at all sold on either choice.

Well, we don't find JMDD "repulsive", because, as we've said, we're open to doing it and we actually DID do it once back during the Queendom era. (And, if he were still around, we'd have done more.) We don't try to "kill off" anything in the FCBA. We know lots of folks like JMD/D and, even if we were absolutely opposed to it (and, we aren't), we wouldn't try to spoil it for others. McKinney ended up here because we've always liked her and nearly signed her twice before we actually did. As for Perry, you, yourself have said that 34 is young for a welter. Katy's going to fight a while yet and, if we do, indeed, decide to remain in the welter division, I have no doubt she'll get a push there. The Garrett match was booked before the Rhoda challenge let alone the fight itself ever took place (as I book Asylum two to three months in advance) and taking it didn't exactly stop us from getting a title shot. (And, following up with another top welter would have been silly because, obviously, we hadn't decided whether to pursue the welter titles.) As for the lightweight title, we were certainly not expecting to be tapped on the shoulder this month (not because Perry isn't deserving, but, because there are LOTS of girls who are deserving and the odds are always against you), but we also were not going to pass up a fight against Yvonne Strahovski, especially not for the lightweight titles. 

We aren't trying to figure out how. For two and a half years, we avoided the titles. In fact, we had two managers email us and ask us if we were interested, and we turned both down. Bonzo did challenge us back in the Sobieski days, and we fought Bjorlin. He also made a challenge to Sobieski, which we had to turn down because we had already booked another fight. And, that's why we couldn't do Perry/Law. We didn't reject it, we had another fight booked. And, if we do decide to go forward at welter, Perry/Law is going to happen.