BACKGROUND:
The executives at Showtime Television and CNN/Sports Illustrated got together for a very secret, closed-door meeting. They were working the final details in a multi-million dollar deal to have the SI swimsuit girls completing in a series of competitive contests, ending with no rules catfights on a new special edition of their Saturday night fight program.

The Showtime suits were furious that HBO had beaten them to the punch and created a special program just for actress catfights. After HBO's programming coup, Showtime saw a very noticeable drop in some groups of their viewers, particularly in the young adult male demographic area. The executives were nervous about these developments and started the ball rolling on this deal with CNN, to get ahead of HBO once again. For their part, CNN loved the idea too. They decided that if they could time the tournament finale properly, it would generate huge demand for their 2003 Swimsuit issue, and possibly build excitement for a 2003 tournament as well.

The groups of executives brainstormed about the fight idea to prime the pump and get people watching, and get people interested in the new SI swimsuit issue. The group of executives had pages and pages of reports about demographics, viewing habits, time slots, sport event viewing, and purchasing of sports magazines. They had a whole range of statistics about their own products and those of their competitors. After long hours of deliberation, the plan was set to broadcast a couple fight events every Saturday night over a several month period.

All the executives in the room knew that they had to offer some good incentives and prizes to get these gorgeous supermodels to agree to participate in the competitive fight events that they had planned, let alone the nothing barred catfights that were planned to end the tournament. They decided upon a $1 million prize to the winner, along with six model contracts for Showtime and various products. Second place would get $500 thousand and three contracts. Third and Fourth place would both get $100 thousand and one contract. They all thought that these prizes would be sufficient to get the gorgeous ladies that they wanted to sign up. They got a huge response, and were able to pick and chose the ladies to participate.

After a few meetings to set up the plans, a lineup for the tournament was chosen. Once the lineup was set, all the ladies involved received notification. The ladies were divided into four teams, based on year. They decided that the Captain for each team should be the cover girl for that year. The four team Captains had a couple meetings together, and some with the other Captain's and the executives. Of course, they also had numerous meetings with their whole team, to discuss their strategy.

The team Captains for the fights came together at the HBO offices. The Showtime people wanted to get the schedule laid out for the group of fights. To keep things interesting, it was decided to randomly select the type of match for each round of fighting. The types of matches picked were nipple twisting, breast smashing, test of strength, arm wrestling, stomach punching, shin kicking, wedgie fights, leg wrestling, tit squeezing, crotch claws, strip matches, bearhug battles, face slapping, and hair pulling contests. After an initial coin toss to determine who went first, the teams alternated between initially naming a girl to fight and responding with a competitor. After a couple hours, all three round of fights were set.

One of the executives also made a suggestion that referees would be needed for the contests, as well as for the actual fights, to maintain order as to make sure that the girls followed the rules. They all agreed that they should hire a group of referees for the fights. They were also in agreement that the referees should be able to stop the fight. After all, none of the executives wanted to see these beauties get seriously hurt. However, they also agreed that the ability of the referee to interfere in or direct the fight would be seriously limited, so that the girls could rip into each other. They all pondered whom they should hire as the referees. After a couple phone calls, it was agreed that the referees would be Playboy Playmates.

Within a few hours, ads had started to run on Showtime to announce the start of the tournament, and the first group of fights.

While the executives at Showtime and CNN had the entire tournament lineup for the set, they only released bits and pieces of the first round to the public in their ad campaign, but they knew the big picture. The fights would be broadcast every Saturday evening, with two groups of fights each Saturday for the first, second and third rounds. They decided they'd re-evaluate how to broadcast the fights after that, once they knew how the ladies and teams fell into place after the third round

They thought they should get a good announcer but in the end they settled for Jessica Alba who was both unemployed and attractive. Then they hired four referees; well known Playmates but also good fighters who were strong, able to enforce the rules if necessary and who wouldn't be pushed around. They were: