If you can’t be good, at least be interesting.
Ideally, the world’s best fighters will be both, but typically it’s one or the other. Former UFC heavyweight champion, Stipe Miocic, previously told the combat sports media that UFC CEO, Dana White, wasn’t prepared to give Miocic a title shot until the full-time firefighter got “more popular.”
Former UFC light heavyweight contender, Corey Anderson, faced a similar struggle.
“The day and age of MMA and fans, they know you by your social media,” Anderson
told MMA Fighting. “So you’ve got a social media with 1.5 million or 3.1 million like Johnny Walker, you’re probably a superstar. They think you’re the greatest there is. The way I grew up in the sport, it was about how good you were. Not how good your social media was.”
Walker, who is coming off an upset win over Zhang Mingyang at UFC Shanghai, currently has more than two million Instagram followers and frequently posts comedic reels to the delight of simple-minded UFC fans. The Brazilian was stopped by Anderson at UFC 244 back in late 2019.
“Hunter Campbell, when I left the UFC before the Johnny Walker fight, he had a conversation with me and he told me ‘We can’t give you a title fight, it’s 100 percent that you deserve a title fight, but we can’t give it to you because your social media isn’t there,’” Anderson continued. “It’s not about who’s the best anymore. It’s about who’s going to put butts in the seats. The fans determine who’s the best fighter off who has the biggest social media [following].”
Prize fighting was never about the best fighter, only the best prize.
“You don’t even have to be good at fighting anymore,” Anderson said. “You’ve just got to have good social media. Guys are getting title fights like Derrick Lewis. He got a title fight because he went out there and said, ‘My balls are hot.’ He got 2.1 million followers overnight. Guess what they did? Well, right now he’s hot so we’re going to give him a title fight because his social media is booming.”
That business plan is how we got this abomination.
“I agree, and that’s why I’m explaining – guys, learn English and how to promote your fights,” former UFC lightweight champion, Islam Makhachev, told Ushatayka. “That’s an important thing; we have to sell live events and be interesting to the public. Our guys live for this sport. In the USA, for example, they don’t worry even if they competed bad, but behind our guys, there is a family, the whole city, the whole Republic.”
Anderson (19-6, 1 NC) returns to fight Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov at PFL Dubai in October.
