Marshall Inu — 2022 in review and a look towards 2023
What a year 2022 has been since Marshall Inu was launched on February 9th! Of course, back then we were branded Marshall Rogan Inu. Within four days of launch, we built a team from the ground up, an active community full of passionate members, and 3700+ holders of $MRI.
From the very beginning we have been steadfast to our motto of Fighting for Fighters and immediately offered all, and paid many, fighters of UFC271 $10k to show, $10k to win. Bobby “King” Green and Roxanne “The Happy Warrior ”Modafferi shouted us out on live TV and during the post fight interviews respectively!
Bobby Green vs. Nasrat Haqparast was voted Fight of the Night by Marshall Inu holders for a payout in Ethereum to the value of $50k. Marshall Inu was also involved in helping fighters outside of appearance bonuses. Ian Heinsch had a career saving course of stem cell therapy covered by the team, and Fabio Cherant had a much needed car bought for him so he could make it to training everyday.
The buzz was very real and heavy hitters of the MMA and combat sports worlds such as Marlon Chito Vera, Henry “Triple C” Cejudo, Ariel Helwani and Derek Brunson were among those making appreciative social media posts or shout-outs online.
By February 21st the direct, organic shout outs Marshall Inu received on live TV during UFC events and during post-fight interviews from many fighters had brought major attention to the project; around this time, the team rolled out billboards and taxi adverts in Los Angeles, California!
Chael Sonnen, who shouted us out from the beginning was popping into Twitter Spaces regularly and and effusively enthused about our mission of helping combat athletes worldwide. Chael made it clear that when a brand does good to the people they serve, the love is reciprocated by people rallying behind the brand. Chael stated, “We found the right guys and we treated them right.”
By this stage $MRI had found the right men and women, and were treating them right; having supported over 50 fighters before the project was even three weeks old, approaching early March and our first Centralized Exchange listing. Our market capitalization was around $100,000,000, which would carry on to a whopping $190,000,000+ valuation by the 7th of March.
When UFC272 rolled around 17 of 26 main card fighters were being supported by $MRI, including Jorge Masvidal and Colby Covington — all of whom shouted us out over the weekend. Some supported fighters revealed that their $MRI pay was more than the pay from their promotion for the fight!
Around this time we sponsored Fury Fighting Championship and the Legacy Fighting Alliance and we also sponsored performance bonuses for Cage Warriors for four fighters during a Marshall Inu takeover weekend with fight of the night being read out by Dan Hardy both nights, as well as displaying $MRI cage banners throughout the event!
We officially sponsored a championship fight on UAE Warriors on March 26th, and our sponsored fighter, Corinne Laframboise, became a UAE Warriors World Champion. Another big name $MRI fighter in Jesse Arnett also absolutely dominated his opponent.
On April 1st Marshall Inu listed on MEXC. Bryce was a guest on the Jesse On Fire YouTube channel and almost 10% of the $MRI supply had been burned forever. Marshall Inu sent ten holders to UFC273 decked out in Marshall merch repping the brand!
In the buildup to UFC273 $MRI received strong support from Alexander Volkanovski, who we supported throughout his training camp in the build up to this event; which saw him drop a video collab on his channel in which he expressed his respect and appreciation for the work $MRI does to help fighters everywhere.
Around this time Marshall Inu hired Brandon Lewis to help with marketing efforts. Who better to empower and support than a fellow fighter? Brandon lead videography and story-telling efforts.
As part of our marketing and publicity drive we painted Times Square, NYC with Marshall Inu branding everywhere one could turn. We also had adverts on Taxi cabs in Las Vegas, Nevada at this time. Many contemporary news outlets were running stories about the crypto dog paying fighters to perform! Copycat Inu’s sprang up and usually failed immediately. Marshall Inu had become a movement!
On April 21st Marshall Inu held a Twitter Space where we gave away $10'000 in prizes to participants. The legendary Chael Sonnen popped in as did Ali Abdelaziz. Ali proved to be an ally to the Marshall cause and he shared stories of fighters all around the world who continued to shout out Marshall Inu despite some organizations prohibiting such endorsements.
Intriguingly Ali also said; “I’m very connected to the Middle East, I’m talking about guys who have billions. And people ask me, like royal princes and royal princesses, leaders, and people ask, ‘what is Marshall Inu’ . . . in this far region of the world, people started asking questions about Marshall Inu.”
By the second week of May, $MRI had been listed on 15 Centralized Exchanges and we launched the $MRI FIAT bridge. Our Liquidity Pool staking platform went live and Rich The Kid released the $MRI theme track!
During May, Marshall Inu successfully bridged to the BSC chain, making it a cross chain token available on both ETH and BSC networks. This made $MRI accessible to many more users and we have steadily built our unique holder count on both chains.
In line with our long held and often declared intention to gradually lower tax on transactions to 0% we formed a strategic partnership with Exponential Capital, a Farming-as-a-Service project in mid May. Through their treasury management service, they bolster a portion of our treasury via their yield farming efforts.
In the last week of May we announced that we would release our very own Marshall Inu “Fight Club” NFT series. This news was well received by the Marshall community, as was the news that 100% of NFT proceeds would go to bolster our liquidity!
On May 26th we welcomed our latest $MRI Ambassador into the team; Dave “The King of Lethwei” Leduc. Dave is a Professional Burmese Bareknuckle Fighter and the Undefeated 6-times Lethwei World Champion!
With Dave joining fellow fighters Ian Heinisch, Bryce Mitchell, Kevin Holland, Kelvin Gastelum, Kamaru Usman, Chael Sonnen, Bobby Green, Aljamain Sterling, Alexander Volkanovski, Paulo Costa and Nasrat Haqparast as an MRI Ambassador we gained a new dimension and a whole new sport became part of the Marshall Army.
Also on the 26th Paulo Costa, UFC legend and meme King hosted our meme comp finals live on the Marshall Inu YouTube Channel. Paulo picked the best memes submitted by our Marshalls and handed out $2500 as prizes for the winning entries!
On June 1st we realized a milestone for Marshall Inu as we reached over $5,000,000 (USD) gifted to over 500 MMA athletes/organizations around the world! Furthermore, we were able to donate to fighter-based charities such as Bryce Mitchell’s children’s foundation. We sponsored entire gyms in countries like Brazil to allow youths to train there and pursue their dream without worrying about expenses.
By June 9th the $MRI YouTube podcast named “Mixed Marshall Arts” has featured several MMA legends including, Alexander Volkanovski, Aljamain Sterling, Chael Sonnen, Marvin Vettori, Rose Namajunas, to name but a few, and we released the first episode of the #FightingForFighters series on the channel.
$MRI team traveled to UFC Singapore in the second week of June. Our Marshall team hit the ground running, bearing bushels of $MRI merchandise for our supported fighters, supporters and the general public! They also had a mission of shooting promotional videos to provide material for our ceaseless promotions of the brand.
During UFC Singapore fight night, long time $MRI stalwart Brandon Allen shouted us out while giving his post fight victory speech inside the octagon! And Forbes ran an article reporting on undefeated 6-times Lethwei World Champion, Dave Leduc, coming on board as our MRI brand ambassador.
Approaching the end of July we opened our official Marshall Inu Discord channel to the general public and we launched the Marshall Mansion experience with preparations being made for a grand event at UFC Texas! Never short of bullish news; Bryce also teased the concept of what would later become the Marshall Fighting Championship!
The Marshall Inu Fight Club (#MRIFC) public mint launched on the 21st and minted out in just 22 hours. With stunning art and innovative inbuilt utility this was one for the ages! The first utility was quickly realized with winners getting a Marshall Mansion trip as a prize in our lossless perpetual lottery!
The first Marshall Mansion event was held to coincide with UFC Texas on the weekend of July 16th and it was a massive success. Ten winning NFT holders were in attendance along with $MRI whales and team and UFC superstars.
There was a DJ in attendance, a smorgasbord of fine Texas style food, great vibes all around and all the guests got to spend two days and nights at the venue with a chauffeured limo service ferrying the revelers to and from the UFC event!
Since launch date $MRI had burned almost 22% of supply between ETH and BSC chains by early August. At this time it was noticed that the auto burn was negatively affecting our LP pool. In order to protect both our liquidity and our loyal staking holders we paused the auto burn at this date.
In the build up to UFC278, on August 21st, the man the meme, the legend himself; Paulo Costa was returning for another tenure as meme king of $MRI with a $3000 meme comp. After beating Luke Rockhold, Paulo casually shouted out the Marshall Inu meme comp during his victory interview with Rogan himself! What a legend.
August 18th is a massive date in the history of Marshall Inu as it’s the day that we officially announced the launch of the Marshall Fighting Championship with Dave Leduc as our MFC President! The first event was scheduled just nine weeks later in Slovakia. NFT holder fight scoring was announced and we held a design for the main event belt with the winning effort securing a $1000 prize and having their design brought to life!
When September rolled around it was announced that the main event would be sanctioned by the World Lethwei Federation for the 71KG World Title . Furthermore, Dave shared that the World Lethwei Federation President Andi Egeberg would be in attendance cageside!
There was a huge amount of work involved in putting this show together. For some, it was a learning experience, and for others; well they were acting as mentors to help reach our project goals and make the event a success. We documented this in our Inside MFC mini documentary series. Watch it here.
The show opened on Friday 29th October at historic Bojnice castle, where the combatants faced off and, in a novel turn, also arm wrestled each other. On Saturday The main card on Saturday began with an 80kg MMA fight between two Hungarians, Adám Geiszt and Daniel Nedreu. Geiszt winning by submission in the first.
Up next was Hubert Wikar (Poland) vs Samuel Lehocky (Slovakia), fighting MMA rules at 74kg.The judges scored the bout by UD for Lehocky — a very entertaining fight! The next bout saw Michel Hatala (Slovakia) take on Waldemar Karkocha (Poland) in an MMA bout at 70kg. Hatala secured the guillotine and forced the tap with just 40 seconds gone in round number one!
The fourth contest of the evening was a Lethwei fight with Ivan Hatala (Slovakia),V Krystain Niewinzancy (Poland) at 70KG. In the third and final round, Hatala was able to impose some damage on his opponent, but Niewinzancy showed grit and determination to make the final bell. As per Lethwei rules, no K.O was scored, the fight was ruled a draw, and was a strong contender for FOTN with the crowd going absolutely wild during the closing minutes of this great bout!
Next up was $MRI’s very own TikTok manager Cole Ferell (USA) taking on Dragan Pesic (Serbia) in a 77kg MMA bout. Despite a size disadvantage Ferell immediately drove Pesic against the cage and taking both legs secured a huge takedown into side control from where he was able to submit Pesic with strikes 1m and 15 seconds into the first round to secure a clean victory.
The main event of the evening was the World Lethwei Federation 71kg World Title, with Michel Kosik of Slovakia vs. Dan Lariviere of Canada. This fight was a classic for the ages with both men giving and receiving an eye watering amount of damage upon each other for the duration! While normally a Lethwei bout without a KO would be a draw a winner was needed and the judges gave it to Kosik. We would be privileged to see these two great warriors run it back again one day!
Marshall Fighting Championship President Dave was on hand with WLF President Andi Egeberg to present the belt to the winner while our commentary team of Andy Whitelaw and MFC C.O.O Chris Garrido were relaying the events live on YouTube around the world. Tom Wesselink provided colorful ring announcements and Double Red Car Museum provided an intimate venue for the bloodsport.
The event and live stream amassed millions of global impressions and provided a lot of exposure to our MFC sponsors; GenBlok, Heal The World, Dogger Token, Luna Inu, Dosa Coin, Marshelle Inu, World Cup Inu and Play Numbers Game. It was covered by mainstream MMA media outlets and was by any standards a resounding success!
GenBlok were our top sponsor for the event and had pride of place within the cage as well as on all #MFC1 merchandise. Contact us today if your company or project wishes to be a sponsor any future Marshall Fighting Championship event.
Following on from this amazing and successful night; MFC President Dave Leduc shared on social media that Joe Rogan was aware of the #MFC1 event held by a fight promotion named after his beloved Golden Retriever; Marshall. “Marshall is confused, haha” wrote Rogan. We look forward to perhaps seeing Joe as a spectator at a future MFC show!
MFC1 was the great beginning; from here we move with our long term goals in mind to fight for, and be an example of, fair play for all combat athletic promotions. With this in mind in early November MFC President Dave and COO Chris traveled to Dubai to meet with a wealthy, connected, Lethwei loving businessman about future of MFC.
Following this meeting the MFC has officially based it’s HQ in Dubai. Dave and Chris also met with Nic St-Maurice of Dubai Athletic Performance and they agreed to have MFC athletes train in his facility to prepare for MFC2 and any future worldwide MFC events.
Dave also revealed that he plans to meet His Highness Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Zayed Al Nahayanin in the UAE — a noted supporter of combat sports and patron of UAE Warriors. Of course, this isn’t the first time they have heard of Marshall Inu!
MFC2 will take place in Dubai in February 2023. Sponsorship partners for this event are, GiveWell Inu, Doge TV, Alcazar, Stablzone and 3DC. If you or your project wishes to sponsor this or any future MFC events please contact us here.
Recently, in early December, renovation and improvement of our staking platform has been announced — we will remove penalty for breaking commitment and add positive incentives. NFT staking will be introduced to claim revenue share from MFC. There will be 25% of all MFC revenue shared to NFT holders! A further 25% will be staked as $MRI and the remaining 50% will bolster Marshall Inu’s treasury!
On December 19th, Marshall Inu supported Fighter Pat Pytlik took on veteran Micheal Hill in a welterweight bout at Unified MMA 48. Pytlik; on the comeback trail after a few tough years took the win and promptly proposed to his girlfriend in the ring! She happily accepted and another wonderful Marshall memory was made.
In the build up to the festive season Marshall Inu has held a $1000 giveaway for two lucky winners and and MFC also held a competition for original MFC1 gloves, used in the ring in Slovakia. And our $MRI merch store is live and has almost everything in stock and bargain prices! Pay in $MRI, any token of your choice or by card!
On December 28th YouTuber Martaverse took a detailed look at the Marshall Inu ecosystem. This video tells you all that you need to know about $MRI and about the Marshall Fighting Championship. Check it out.
As we look to the new year it’s time to prepare for MFC2 in Dubai in February! It promises to be bigger, better and brighter than MFC1: The Great Beginning! This will be a springboard towards our roadmap goals for the project as a whole and a catalyst upon our journey to a market cap in the billions!
As we leave behind 2022, a year that will live long in memory, and enter into 2023; from everybody at Marshall Inu we wish each and every one of you a New Year filled with abundance and joy. 2023 will be the year of $MRI!
