At this past springs UFC Fighter Summit, President Dana White announced a “Twitter incentive” campaign to the gathered men and women of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and Strikeforce promotions.
Now the UFC has announced twelve winners of the first quarter Twitter campaign, awarding each a bonus of $5,000 each for such categories as Most Followers, Biggest % increase in followers, and Most Creative.
Twelve bonuses of $5,000 each will go to the following nine fighters:
Most followers:
Anderson Silva, UFC middleweight champion – 604,511
Minotauro Nogueira – 176,852
Demian Maia – 69,792
Cris Cyborg, Strikeforce women’s featherweight champion – 12,252Biggest percent increase in followers:
Anderson Silva – 106.5%
Minotauro Nogueira – 290%
Demian Maia – 157%
Paulo Thiago – 301%Most creative:
Forrest Griffin
From the dawn of TUF through his best-selling books, Griffin has been revered for his unique and comic voice. On Twitter, his messages are sporadic but unmistakeably Forrest. Notified of his win, he wrote: “Irony: found put on twitter I won a prize for tweeting” and “When the @ufc says most creative what they obviously mean is incoherent ramblings.”Joe Lauzon
Lauzon used a multi-platform approach to scoop the MMA media and break the news of his UFC 136 fight against Melvin Guillard… with the blessing of the UFC, of course (no leaks!). He wrote a post on his own site with his reasons for taking the fight and his (ultimately correct) prediction for how it would play out, then tweeted a link.Benson Henderson
Henderson live-tweeted during the UFC 133 pre-fight conference call, giving fans access to what is usually a media-only affair. He also took questions from fans during the call, fully incorporating them into the event.Joseph Benavidez
Benavidez held a Twitter contest asking fans to suggest and then vote on a new nickname, which was to be announced by Bruce Buffer inside the Octagon at Benavidez’ August fight. The contest received over 1,000 mentions and 250 nominations.
Winners in each category were selected by White with submissions by fighters fans, staff, and Digital Royalty. Digital Royalty is the company charged with tracking the social media statistics for this campaign.