Let's talk about the weird relationship MMA fighters have with MMA media
Some of it's a misunderstanding, some of it is the media's own fault, but the result is fighters and promoters agreeing that everyone with a laptop is a "scumbag" (except for when they aren't)
UFC heavyweight Derrick Lewis has a plan.
Step 1: Win a billion goddamn dollars in the lottery.
Step 2: Buy the UFC.
Step 3: Go scorched earth on the MMA media.
OK, so obviously he was mostly joking here – the UFC is currently on track to make $1 billion per year in revenue, so even a historic lotto win wouldn’t be nearly enough to buy it – but I suspect there was some kernel of truth to that last part, especially since, even in jest, it was the first thing on Lewis’ mind to do as the hypothetical new owner of the UFC.
“I’m going to talk so much shit to the reporters,” Lewis said this week at the UFC 277 pre-fight media day. “Ooh, I’m going to dog your asses out like y’all do us fighters. … Fuck y’all. Y’all talk so much shit about me, for no reason. And I’m sitting up here telling your ass the truth. I don’t give a fuck about this fighting shit, and y’all sitting up here telling me, ‘Oh I don’t think Derrick got it.’ What the fuck I been telling y’all? Fuck y’all. It is what it is, I don’t care.”
Again, he’s joking. Mostly. Kind of. Maybe you have to hear the way he said it in order to get the full context. But I don’t know, something about the tone and the repetition of “fuck y’all,” that part feels genuine.
Thing is, as was pointed out to Lewis by one of the reporters present, he’s actually something of a media darling in MMA. Journalists love him, and with good reason. The man is great copy, gets good clicks, and you can always count on him for some hilarious quotes. He’s also one of the few fighters who will show up and tell you that he’s not that great at fighting, isn’t particularly bothered by that, and doesn’t care (or always even know) who his opponent is. Some of that is the character he’s made himself into. But like all good gimmicks it’s based on his real personality, just dialed up for effect. Either way, it’s a gift to the media and they love him for it.
A lot of pro fighters have negative feelings about the MMA media, which intuitively makes sense. Just like players and coaches in the NBA or NFL might have some pent up anger toward the people whose job it is to talk about how they’re a waste of salary cap space or how they should be driven from the city by a torch-wielding mob, fighters understandably feel some type of way about the people who publicly assess their performances in the cage.
But really though? Compared to basically every other major pro sport, the main media outlets in MMA are almost painstakingly kind to fighters. They might be the ones to point it out when fighters say something racist or homophobic. And they’re the ones to let people know which fighter got arrested. But mostly? There’s not even very much space for reserved for the type of commentary that might veer into dogging out territory.
A quick tour through the homepages of the two big MMA specialty sites – MMAFighting.com and MMAJunkie.com, both of which I spent multiple years working for at different points – reveals three basic categories of stories:
– This guy/girl said this about that
– This is a newsworthy, factual thing that actually happened
– This is some analysis leading to an educated guess about what might happen in upcoming fights
The first category accounts for the bulk of the stories. It’s the easiest category to churn out, because you can take one 15-minute interview and break it down into separate clickable stories on each individual topic of interest that was discussed. All you need is a couple decent quotes (or one really good one for the sake of the headline), a very little bit of writing to serve as a plank from one quote to the next, and boom, you’ve got a bunch of 500-700 word stories to fill out your homepage.
This category is also nice because you don’t necessarily need to be the one doing the interview in order to mine the quotes for content. It doesn’t even have to be from an interview. It could be from an Instagram post or a quip from a “UFC Embedded” video. Thus does some fighter’s social media post after a loss transform into him “issuing a statement” or “breaking his silence” by the time it makes its way into a headline. This works even if the actual statement is no more interesting or complicated that the fighter saying, ‘it sucks that I lost and I wish I had won.’
So how do fighters get mad when this is what most of the content is? I think there’s a few reasons, and they often work in concert with one another.
One is that the media is always an easy scapegoat. That’s true culture-wide, not just in MMA. The term itself covers so much ground, especially now. We all have media we trust, whether it’s giant news organizations or some person’s podcast, but we also all have media we don’t trust even a little bit. If you’re a fighter who finds yourself in trouble for some stuff you said, you can always play on this mistrust by claiming your words were “taken out of context.” (Even better, if you did the interview via an interpreter, simply complain that some important stuff was lost in translation.)
But another is that fighters are probably somewhat understandably confused about who the media in this sport actually is (and isn’t). For instance, think about any of the MMA meme accounts on Twitter and/or Instagram. Think about the people who don’t work for any media outlet, but still have amassed a Twitter following for their (sometimes scathing) commentary.
Some of these accounts are hilarious and rad, others merely think they are, but are they part of the MMA media? Well, no, in that they’re not credentialed to attend events, and sometimes no one even knows their real names. But the popular ones are definitely part of the media ecosystem in this sport. They get retweeted by established reporters. Fans share their work all over the place. They help shape the online conversation. And since MMA doesn’t get talked about much outside of these niche online outlets (and sometimes on shows produced by whoever the UFC broadcast partner is at the moment), that conversation can feel like the whole ballgame.
So if you’re a fighter whose unconscious body just got photoshopped into a scene from “Toy Story,” the distinction between official media and people popping off online probably feels pretty meaningless. What you see is people making fun of you, reveling in your humiliation and failure, and from a distance that whole project seems enabled and encouraged by the media.
By the way, that’s not me arguing that the meme accounts should be somehow shunned. A lot of that shit is just straight-up funny. And for many fans, getting on the internet and cracking wise, talking shit, making and sharing memes with online friends they’ll probably never actually meet? That’s the whole fun of fight night. That is what fandom looks like for MMA. Fighters don’t have to like it, especially when they’re on the business end of the jokes, but to some extent that’s what comes with being a public figure who gets paid to be on TV.
But I think we can all see why, in the depressing days after a painful loss, when it feels like the whole internet is pointing and laughing, fighters might start to develop a strong interior Fuck Y’all kind of feeling. When they show up at the next pre-fight media day and all these people are asking them questions about that same painful loss, poking at the weak spots and asking them to consider the possibility that it’s about to happen all over again, even the most reasonable fighters might look out at that collection of people and see the very same Y’all who they felt those feelings about. And when most of those people look like they couldn’t fight their way out of a speeding ticket, the sense of injustice probably only increases.
The last piece of the puzzle is that a lot of fighters just don’t have a great sense of what the media’s role is. Some of that is attributable to the UFC and other promoters, which often act as if the media’s most important job is to hype up the fights and help sell tickets but otherwise shut the hell up, with anything that casts fighters or the sport itself in a bad light being the worst kind of betrayal. But another part of it is that a lot of media members have unwittingly conditioned fighters (and their managers) to expect a certain level of deferential treatment.
This is one of the perils of access journalism. If the price of getting the interview is that the reporter has to tell the story the way the fighter wants it told, all rainbows and puppy dogs until it’s essentially just a cross between a transcription service and free public relations work, then eventually the fighter comes to expect that this is what journalism is supposed to look like. Anybody who does anything different than that is an asshole. And lest you doubt that they are assholes, there’s the boss, UFC President Dana White, calling them assholes (or, the term he prefers, “scumbag media”) every time he hears even the whiff of criticism.
The irony is, you know who actually talks the most shit about UFC fighters at and around UFC events? No question, it’s Dana White. He’s the most critical person at just about every post-fight press conference. Even when fighters win he still sometimes has plenty of negative stuff to say about them – especially if they’ve ever complained about pay or opportunities or anything else the UFC controls.
Dana White routinely craps on fighters the way fighters seem to think the media craps on them. Seriously, there are entire videos on YouTube that are nothing but White burying his own fighters.
And they’re not nobodies, either. We’re talking multiple UFC champions, greats of the sport whose labor has enriched the UFC and White personally. Still, the minute they get on his bad side they’re idiots, scumbags, ego-mad narcissists.
Most fighters realize this, but what are they going to do about it? History has taught them that there’s no percentage in feuding with the boss. Ultimately, it hurts you more than it hurts him. It’s way easier to get mad at the media who report it each time he says you don’t deserve any more money. Even if those same media are typically the only ones who speak up to say otherwise.