Who wants a piece of International Fight League?

Back on February 21, I argued that shares of International Fight League (OTC: IFLI) were hopelessly overvalued at their price of $11.90 per share. Given that the stock closed at 19 cents on Monday, it looks like a lot of other investors felt the same way.

To be fair, it wasn't a tough call. International Fight League is an upstart in the mixed martial arts business, a very, very distant second to UFC. And yet its market cap, for a very brief period, eclipsed that of World Wrestling Entertainment (NYSE: WWE), a profitable household name.

So what happened? I have absolutely no idea. The company continues to put out press releases announcing deals like this one with HBO Latin America, but the company's chairman and CEO resigned abruptly last month.

It's certainly possible that shares of IFLI simply soared on the naive hopes of fans of the sport -- who then realized their error and dumped the shares all the way down to 19 cents. But the rapid rise and equally abrupt decline, unexplained by any apparent fundamental developments, smells of some kind of manipulation. But that's just speculation.

In any case, International Fight League exists as a cautionary tale: Don't pay absurd valuations for unprofitable new companies just because they're in exciting, fast-growth industries.