THE HISTORY OF THE BLACKZILIANS
By Damon Martin, FOX Sports
Timing is everything in mixed martial arts.
Whether you're talking about fights getting made or titles being won, MMA is a sport built on timing working out to make things happen. One fighter can't take a fight on a particular date, another volunteers to take their place and the course of history is sometimes changed forever.
Timing is an especially important factor when looking at the formation of a team in Florida, founded in 2011, that was built from splintered pieces of fighters exiting other gyms and an owner who never intended to get into the MMA business in the first place.
It all starts with a Florida businessman named Glenn Robinson, who built a company called Iron Bridge Tools into a $100 million empire before he ever stepped foot into American Top Team while looking for a place to train.
