Tag: CagePotato

Ten Unrelated Thoughts About Running a Mid-Level MMA Blog — A Goodbye Letter From BG

(Author’s note: Please listen to this song while reading the column below. When it ends, listen to it again.)

By Ben Goldstein

1. I was 26, I had just gotten fired for the first time, and I was scared about making rent in New York without a job. A guy I sort of knew hired me to launch a blog about MMA for a media company based in Los Angeles. It was more money that I was making as a low-level editor for a low-level men’s magazine, and I could do it from home. Seemed like a better plan than unemployment.

2. My God, that was over seven years ago. George W. Bush was president. MMA was “the world’s fastest growing sport.” Everything seemed possible.

3. Running CagePotato was the greatest job I ever had because I could write what I wanted without being edited or censored. Developing a roster of like-minded outlaw-writers was a blast (see list of thank-yous, below), and the job helped me discover talents I didn’t even know I possessed. Plus, working from home meant I never had to use an office bathroom stall next to a co-worker after lunch. Some of you don’t understand what a luxury that is.

4. Running CagePotato was the hardest job I ever had because it was the first time I had genuine responsibility in my professional life. I was judged for my site’s performance, and people depended on me showing up every day. Sometimes, I got yelled at.


(Author’s note: Please listen to this song while reading the column below. When it ends, listen to it again.)

By Ben Goldstein

1. I was 26, I had just gotten fired for the first time, and I was scared about making rent in New York without a job. A guy I sort of knew hired me to launch a blog about MMA for a media company based in Los Angeles. It was more money that I was making as a low-level editor for a low-level men’s magazine, and I could do it from home. Seemed like a better plan than unemployment.

2. My God, that was over seven years ago. George W. Bush was president. MMA was “the world’s fastest growing sport.” Everything seemed possible.

3. Running CagePotato was the greatest job I ever had because I could write what I wanted without being edited or censored. Developing a roster of like-minded outlaw-writers was a blast (see list of thank-yous, below), and the job helped me discover talents I didn’t even know I possessed. Plus, working from home meant I never had to use an office bathroom stall next to a co-worker after lunch. Some of you don’t understand what a luxury that is.

4. Running CagePotato was the hardest job I ever had because it was the first time I had genuine responsibility in my professional life. I was judged for my site’s performance, and people depended on me showing up every day. Sometimes, I got yelled at.

5. There was the time the New Yorker mentioned us, and the time our name showed up on Lights Out, and the time we were threatened with legal action over a photo caption, and every time something like that happened, I realized that people were paying attention. It’s an incredible feeling, and it never got old.

6. Speaking of photo captions, I’ll miss writing photo captions.

7. Of course, the CP experiences I’ll remember the most are the ones in which I actually left my desk: Invading the UFC Fan Expo in Boston with ReX13 and Viva Hate, where we shut down an entire corridor of the convention hall with our punch machine. (Thanks Pat! Thanks Bruce!) Partying in Toronto with Mike Russell and Brian D’Souza and Bern and Stefan and AgentSmith and everyone else. Road-tripping to a Bellator show in Mount Pleasant with Jason Moles. Watching Fedor knock Brett Rogers’s head off from press row, and trying to stay professional about it, while inside my head I was like HELL YEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHH!!!! Even the times I just took the subway somewhere else in Manhattan to interview Urijah Faber or Carlos Condit or Randy Couture. Those were good days.

8. My departure from CagePotato concludes the most important stretch of my adult life so far, and I haven’t finished processing my emotions about it, which are intense and conflicting. I’m sad to leave my own creation, I’m scared about the uncertainty of my future, and I’m completely thrilled to take a break from caring about MMA, at least temporarily. More than anything, I’m thankful I had the chance to do something that mattered to people. And I’m thankful to have covered the sport during 2008-2009, when MMA was at its peak level of excitement and insanity, before it all started to fall apart.

9. CagePotato wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I like to think its existence was necessary. I launched the site with the goal of creating the most entertaining MMA site on the Internet. Along the way, the goal evolved into something much greater — truth-telling, exposing bullshit in all corners of the industry, saying what others couldn’t get away with saying. Whatever happens to the site, please don’t let this spirit die out. Pick up the mantle, continue the fight without me.

10. Everyone who ever wrote for CagePotato — or who even read the site on a regular basis — deserves my sincere gratitude. But of course, there are a few people who are worthy of additional thanks. Here they are, loosely arranged in chronological order…

Jonathan Small, who hired me in October 2007 and came up with the name CagePotato. (I’m still on the fence about it, but I guess it’ll work for now.)

Keith Richman, who allowed Jonathan Small to hire me, and supported CagePotato’s existence for over seven years. I owe you one, Keith.

My wife Rachel, who allowed me to work out of the bedroom in our first apartment, and the kitchen in our next apartment, and the space between the dining room and the living room in our next apartment, and in what would have been a nice guest bedroom in the house that we live in now, and who has been admirably patient with a husband who is always at home and rarely in presentable condition before noon. When I started writing this farewell column, I went into my Gmail and tried to find the earliest references to CagePotato, but I got distracted reading through my wife and I’s old email exchanges from like 2007-2008. Just a couple of shmoopy twenty-somethings in looooooove. We weren’t married yet, and this thing was our greatest joint responsibility. What a time to be alive. Reading our old emails was the most enjoyable part of putting this all together. Rachel, I just fucking love you to death. None of this works without you.

Ben Fowlkes: The best sparring partner a writer could have. Everything that happened on CagePotato pre-BF was just prologue. The official launch of the site, in my eyes, happened when Fowlkes came on as a staff writer in May 2008, and started putting out work that was just as madcap as the posts I’d been writing, but much more polished and thoughtful. His success in this industry was inevitable, and I’m so grateful for the two years he spent on CP. There’s no way the site would have caught on in those early days if not for Ben Fowlkes. He set a bar that every CagePotato writer who followed him aspired to reach. And then when he left, CagePotato sucked, and nobody even went there anymore. The end.

Doug “ReX13” Richardson: Defender of the realm. The only CP staff writer immortalized in a video game, and the guy who first suggested that maybe we should cover Bellator once in a while. I remember our first date at that gay barbecue joint like it was yesterday. Love and bro-hugs forever.

Chad Dundas: CP’s first weekend editor and MMA’s most vocal cheating-advocate. A man who really knew how to bury an event, back when a garbage UFC card was actually a rare occurrence. As he wrote in his own farewell, “I think this website fills a valuable niche in our dark little corner of the web. Somebody’s got to point out when the people in this industry say ridiculous shit, wear ridiculous T-shirts and marry ridiculous porn stars. That somebody, as far as I’m concerned is CagePotato and I hope it continues to fill that need long after we’ve all grown up and taken part time jobs at major corporations.”

Mike Russell: The Gusbuster. New Dad. The only one in our crew who knew how to produce a podcast and use Photoshop. My co-pilot during CagePotato’s peak of popularity, in terms of site traffic. I’m sorry things didn’t end well. You deserved better.

Brian J. D’Souza: Having Brian’s writing on the site — not just Shill ‘Em All, but also his great one-off columns like this and this — is probably the closest that CagePotato has come to being a respectable journalistic enterprise, worthy of actual awards.  When I was in Toronto for UFC 129, Brian and I met up for lunch, and he told me something I’ll never forget: “The UFC doesn’t like you because they’re afraid of you.” I’d never thought about it like that. Brian made me realize the power of outsider MMA media, and why outlets like CagePotato can be dangerous forces for good. Giving brilliant, uncompromising writers like Brian an outlet to speak freely means more to me than any other professional accomplishment in my life.

Seth Falvo: The inspirational true story of an American hero who started out as a commenter and became a CagePotato staff writer and master of pro-wrestling analogies. A legitimately talented reporter when he wasn’t bartending.

Chris Coleman: Still my favorite caption in CagePotato history.

Jared Jones: The Prince of Darkness. My evil henchman. An unreliable screw-up (and possible Satanist?), and yet he was the only person I trusted to keep an eye on the site when I was on vacation. Probably the funniest writer CP has ever had, in terms of LOLs-per-paragraph, and certainly the best at expressing the crushing absurdity of our collective situation. You haven’t seen the last of our professional relationship. Jared and I plan to start a band together in the spring.

Matt Saccaro: In all my rapturous praise of this man I forgot to mention how much I loved the first FoodPotato column and his hilarious Martial Arts Fail of the Week series. I will take you up on that magic ice cream offer the next time I’m in New York, brother.

Alex Macris: Archon, The Final Boss. The only time we met in person, it was during a week-long blizzard in North Carolina that I think he might have been responsible for, somehow. An enviable mind. Thanks for your encouragement and patience.

That’s all for now, Potato Nation. I wish things had worked out differently in some ways — stories for another day, perhaps — but I’m incredibly proud of what we all accomplished together, and the impact we made in the grimy, insane world of MMA. When all is said and done, I never broke my balls for anyone, and I never subscribed to Fight Pass. I can live with that. It’s been an amazing ride, you guys; time to get on the next one.

Follow Ben on twitter @goldsteinraw.

Ten Unrelated Thoughts About Running a Mid-Level MMA Blog — A Goodbye Letter From BG

(Author’s note: Please listen to this song while reading the column below. When it ends, listen to it again.)

By Ben Goldstein

1. I was 26, I had just gotten fired for the first time, and I was scared about making rent in New York without a job. A guy I sort of knew hired me to launch a blog about MMA for a media company based in Los Angeles. It was more money that I was making as a low-level editor for a low-level men’s magazine, and I could do it from home. Seemed like a better plan than unemployment.

2. My God, that was over seven years ago. George W. Bush was president. MMA was “the world’s fastest growing sport.” Everything seemed possible.

3. Running CagePotato was the greatest job I ever had because I could write what I wanted without being edited or censored. Developing a roster of like-minded outlaw-writers was a blast (see list of thank-yous, below), and the job helped me discover talents I didn’t even know I possessed. Plus, working from home meant I never had to use an office bathroom stall next to a co-worker after lunch. Some of you don’t understand what a luxury that is.

4. Running CagePotato was the hardest job I ever had because it was the first time I had genuine responsibility in my professional life. I was judged for my site’s performance, and people depended on me showing up every day. Sometimes, I got yelled at.


(Author’s note: Please listen to this song while reading the column below. When it ends, listen to it again.)

By Ben Goldstein

1. I was 26, I had just gotten fired for the first time, and I was scared about making rent in New York without a job. A guy I sort of knew hired me to launch a blog about MMA for a media company based in Los Angeles. It was more money that I was making as a low-level editor for a low-level men’s magazine, and I could do it from home. Seemed like a better plan than unemployment.

2. My God, that was over seven years ago. George W. Bush was president. MMA was “the world’s fastest growing sport.” Everything seemed possible.

3. Running CagePotato was the greatest job I ever had because I could write what I wanted without being edited or censored. Developing a roster of like-minded outlaw-writers was a blast (see list of thank-yous, below), and the job helped me discover talents I didn’t even know I possessed. Plus, working from home meant I never had to use an office bathroom stall next to a co-worker after lunch. Some of you don’t understand what a luxury that is.

4. Running CagePotato was the hardest job I ever had because it was the first time I had genuine responsibility in my professional life. I was judged for my site’s performance, and people depended on me showing up every day. Sometimes, I got yelled at.

5. There was the time the New Yorker mentioned us, and the time our name showed up on Lights Out, and the time we were threatened with legal action over a photo caption, and every time something like that happened, I realized that people were paying attention. It’s an incredible feeling, and it never got old.

6. Speaking of photo captions, I’ll miss writing photo captions.

7. Of course, the CP experiences I’ll remember the most are the ones in which I actually left my desk: Invading the UFC Fan Expo in Boston with ReX13 and Viva Hate, where we shut down an entire corridor of the convention hall with our punch machine. (Thanks Pat! Thanks Bruce!) Partying in Toronto with Mike Russell and Brian D’Souza and Bern and Stefan and AgentSmith and everyone else. Road-tripping to a Bellator show in Mount Pleasant with Jason Moles. Watching Fedor knock Brett Rogers’s head off from press row, and trying to stay professional about it, while inside my head I was like HELL YEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHH!!!! Even the times I just took the subway somewhere else in Manhattan to interview Urijah Faber or Carlos Condit or Randy Couture. Those were good days.

8. My departure from CagePotato concludes the most important stretch of my adult life so far, and I haven’t finished processing my emotions about it, which are intense and conflicting. I’m sad to leave my own creation, I’m scared about the uncertainty of my future, and I’m completely thrilled to take a break from caring about MMA, at least temporarily. More than anything, I’m thankful I had the chance to do something that mattered to people. And I’m thankful to have covered the sport during 2008-2009, when MMA was at its peak level of excitement and insanity, before it all started to fall apart.

9. CagePotato wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I like to think its existence was necessary. I launched the site with the goal of creating the most entertaining MMA site on the Internet. Along the way, the goal evolved into something much greater — truth-telling, exposing bullshit in all corners of the industry, saying what others couldn’t get away with saying. Whatever happens to the site, please don’t let this spirit die out. Pick up the mantle, continue the fight without me.

10. Everyone who ever wrote for CagePotato — or who even read the site on a regular basis — deserves my sincere gratitude. But of course, there are a few people who are worthy of additional thanks. Here they are, loosely arranged in chronological order…

Jonathan Small, who hired me in October 2007 and came up with the name CagePotato. (I’m still on the fence about it, but I guess it’ll work for now.)

Keith Richman, who allowed Jonathan Small to hire me, and supported CagePotato’s existence for over seven years. I owe you one, Keith.

My wife Rachel, who allowed me to work out of the bedroom in our first apartment, and the kitchen in our next apartment, and the space between the dining room and the living room in our next apartment, and in what would have been a nice guest bedroom in the house that we live in now, and who has been admirably patient with a husband who is always at home and rarely in presentable condition before noon. When I started writing this farewell column, I went into my Gmail and tried to find the earliest references to CagePotato, but I got distracted reading through my wife and I’s old email exchanges from like 2007-2008. Just a couple of shmoopy twenty-somethings in looooooove. We weren’t married yet, and this thing was our greatest joint responsibility. What a time to be alive. Reading our old emails was the most enjoyable part of putting this all together. Rachel, I just fucking love you to death. None of this works without you.

Ben Fowlkes: The best sparring partner a writer could have. Everything that happened on CagePotato pre-BF was just prologue. The official launch of the site, in my eyes, happened when Fowlkes came on as a staff writer in May 2008, and started putting out work that was just as madcap as the posts I’d been writing, but much more polished and thoughtful. His success in this industry was inevitable, and I’m so grateful for the two years he spent on CP. There’s no way the site would have caught on in those early days if not for Ben Fowlkes. He set a bar that every CagePotato writer who followed him aspired to reach. And then when he left, CagePotato sucked, and nobody even went there anymore. The end.

Doug “ReX13” Richardson: Defender of the realm. The only CP staff writer immortalized in a video game, and the guy who first suggested that maybe we should cover Bellator once in a while. I remember our first date at that gay barbecue joint like it was yesterday. Love and bro-hugs forever.

Chad Dundas: CP’s first weekend editor and MMA’s most vocal cheating-advocate. A man who really knew how to bury an event, back when a garbage UFC card was actually a rare occurrence. As he wrote in his own farewell, “I think this website fills a valuable niche in our dark little corner of the web. Somebody’s got to point out when the people in this industry say ridiculous shit, wear ridiculous T-shirts and marry ridiculous porn stars. That somebody, as far as I’m concerned is CagePotato and I hope it continues to fill that need long after we’ve all grown up and taken part time jobs at major corporations.”

Mike Russell: The Gusbuster. New Dad. The only one in our crew who knew how to produce a podcast and use Photoshop. My co-pilot during CagePotato’s peak of popularity, in terms of site traffic. I’m sorry things didn’t end well. You deserved better.

Brian J. D’Souza: Having Brian’s writing on the site — not just Shill ‘Em All, but also his great one-off columns like this and this — is probably the closest that CagePotato has come to being a respectable journalistic enterprise, worthy of actual awards.  When I was in Toronto for UFC 129, Brian and I met up for lunch, and he told me something I’ll never forget: “The UFC doesn’t like you because they’re afraid of you.” I’d never thought about it like that. Brian made me realize the power of outsider MMA media, and why outlets like CagePotato can be dangerous forces for good. Giving brilliant, uncompromising writers like Brian an outlet to speak freely means more to me than any other professional accomplishment in my life.

Seth Falvo: The inspirational true story of an American hero who started out as a commenter and became a CagePotato staff writer and master of pro-wrestling analogies. A legitimately talented reporter when he wasn’t bartending.

Chris Coleman: Still my favorite caption in CagePotato history.

Jared Jones: The Prince of Darkness. My evil henchman. An unreliable screw-up (and possible Satanist?), and yet he was the only person I trusted to keep an eye on the site when I was on vacation. Probably the funniest writer CP has ever had, in terms of LOLs-per-paragraph, and certainly the best at expressing the crushing absurdity of our collective situation. You haven’t seen the last of our professional relationship. Jared and I plan to start a band together in the spring.

Matt Saccaro: In all my rapturous praise of this man I forgot to mention how much I loved the first FoodPotato column and his hilarious Martial Arts Fail of the Week series. I will take you up on that magic ice cream offer the next time I’m in New York, brother.

Alex Macris: Archon, The Final Boss. The only time we met in person, it was during a week-long blizzard in North Carolina that I think he might have been responsible for, somehow. An enviable mind. Thanks for your encouragement and patience.

That’s all for now, Potato Nation. I wish things had worked out differently in some ways — stories for another day, perhaps — but I’m incredibly proud of what we all accomplished together, and the impact we made in the grimy, insane world of MMA. When all is said and done, I never broke my balls for anyone, and I never subscribed to Fight Pass. I can live with that. It’s been an amazing ride, you guys; time to get on the next one.

Follow Ben on twitter @goldsteinraw.

Goodnight, MMA


(Arguably my lasting contribution to MMA writing)

By Matt Saccaro

This is the last post I’ll ever be making at CagePotato, and this is the last day I’ll ever be tweeting for CagePotato. This is honestly one of the most bittersweet moments of my life. I love CagePotato and I feel so sad leaving, but I’m getting a real media job at a website I adore (assistant social media editor at Salon).

I’m not really sure what to say in a goodbye post. I remember once last year, some Bellator prelim fighter retired. He left his gloves in the ring and friend-of-CagePotato Mike Fagan hilariously buried the guy, comparing this jobber leaving his gloves in the cage to a supermarket clerk leaving his apron in the store parking lot. That’s how I kind of feel with this post. In terms of MMA “journalism,” I didn’t really do anything that spectacular or memorable. I think my lasting contribution to the sport will be asking Ronda Rousey whether she moderated a Pokemon forum in her youth. It’s been three years since I asked and I still see people favoriting that tweet every couple of months.

Still, MMA writing meant a lot to me (even if I didn’t always like the sport or the MMA media) and gave me a direction in life when I didn’t necessarily have one.


(Arguably my lasting contribution to MMA writing.)

By Matt Saccaro

This is the last post I’ll ever be making at CagePotato, and this is the last day I’ll ever be tweeting for CagePotato. This is honestly one of the most bittersweet moments of my life. I love CagePotato and I feel so sad leaving, but I’m getting a real media job at a website I adore (assistant social media editor at Salon).

I’m not really sure what to say in a goodbye post. I remember once last year, some Bellator prelim fighter retired. He left his gloves in the ring and friend-of-CagePotato Mike Fagan hilariously buried the guy, comparing this jobber leaving his gloves in the cage to a supermarket clerk leaving his apron in the store parking lot. That’s how I kind of feel with this post. In terms of MMA “journalism,” I didn’t really do anything that spectacular or memorable. I think my lasting contribution to the sport will be asking Ronda Rousey whether she moderated a Pokemon forum in her youth. It’s been three years since I asked and I still see people favoriting that tweet every couple of months.

Still, MMA writing meant a lot to me (even if I didn’t always like the sport or the MMA media). It gave me a direction in life when I didn’t necessarily have one.

I first got the idea to start writing about MMA when MMAJunkie started their “Sunday Junkie” writing contest. By that time, I had religiously read that site for years. Before class, I’d enjoy a Pop Tart and a glass of iced tea while listening to the rants of Nick Havok and other amazing characters in the comments section. When Junkie started a forum — back when John Morgan was just KingofAbuelos — I was one of the first members. But eventually reading wasn’t enough. I wanted to be more than a forum poster. I submitted an entry to that weekend’s Sunday Junkie and won.

This was October 2010. Senior year of college had just started. I spent most of my spare time submitting applications to graduate schools — I planned to study history and become a professor one day. However, knowing how tough it could be to get into graduate school, I wanted a backup career. Winning the Sunday Junkie made me consider MMA writing (one whose prospects were even worse than graduate study in history!).

By early 2011, I worked up the courage to submit something to Bleacher Report — an article about how Fedor Emelianenko would lose to Bigfoot Silva. Commenters went nuts, but controversy creates cash. After a few more hot takes, I was getting paid.

I started out as a HUGE Zuffa mark, and I mean huge. How bad? I made Ariel Helwani look like Zach fucking Arnold. I didn’t write anything particularly innovative during this time, just the usual “boxing is dead; the UFC will be bigger than the NFL because fighting is in our DNA” garbage except with the volume turned up to 50 out of 10. Eventually, I came around though.

This is already getting too long so I’ll go through the moments I’m most grateful for in my MMA writing “career:”

1. Appearing on Inside MMA in summer 2013. This was right after Chris Weidman beat Anderson Silva the first time. I had some kind of hot take on it and since Axs.tv already had a crew on Long Island to interview Ray Longo, they asked me to go meet their crew in Longo’s gym to do a brief segment with Bas Rutten. This is easily one of my favorite accomplishments/moments in my life.

I remember watching Inside MMA in senior year of high school. I dreamed about being on the show, but as a fighter since I wanted to be a fighter back then. I was horrible at fighting though. I trained in kickboxing throughout my youth and despite 10+ years of it I was barely average. I possessed even fewer MMA and grappling skills. I trained in MMA and BJJ for two years, 4-5 days a week and MAYBE submitted four people in that time frame. Being an idiot and believing what society said, I thought all it took was hard work. So I kept training more and more, expecting to get better by magic when genetics had other plans. Eventually, I over-trained to the point of permanent injury and now I can’t even do a push-up without being in pain.

So I never thought I’d be on Inside MMA when I stopped training in 2010. But I was! And I was so ecstatic about it, even if the show’s reputation had fallen quite a bit by that time.

2. Predicting the rise of Chris Weidman before anyone else. In November 2011, I went on record saying Chris Weidman would murder Anderson Silva should the two ever meet. As Internet commenters say, “First!”

3. Pretty much everything I did at CagePotato. I could write 10,000 words about how much fun I had here. I won’t though. I’ll just tell you what my two favorite posts were: The 95 These of MMA and the Magic the Gathering cards post. The 95 Theses of MMA was born of my own laziness because I didn’t feel like covering two events in the same day — two events I knew would get no traffic. I figured the stunt of not covering the events and instead offering a scathing critique of MMA would perform far better (and it did). Making Magic the Gathering cards of different fighters is an idea I’ve had since high school. I just didn’t know there was a program to make said cards until last year.

And then there’s CagePotato’s twitter account. I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun on the Internet than I did live-tweeting MMA events for CagePotato over the last year and a half. I was so amazed/honored/humbled that people actually liked what I had to say about these events and thought the tweets were funny. I’m still heartbroken I’ll never do that again. The few events that I do watch in the future will feel so lonely and sad now…

When I started running CagePotato’s twitter, Ben and I both agreed we wanted it to be different from the other MMA sites. Maybe at times it was too different, but the following increased by over six thousand people. If nothing else, CagePotato’s twitter had a unique voice that I was really proud of. The last thing Ben and I wanted CagePotato’s twitter to be was one in 1,000 identical voices in the MMA sphere: “What a great fight for [winner], but [loser] will be back stronger than ever!”

I’m sad to go, but this is the way it’s gotta be. CagePotato really meant a lot to me. It was the only positive thing during a time in my life when there were very few of them.

I want to thank Ben Goldstein for letting me write here and tweet about elder gods beaming their consciousness into slices of buffalo chicken pizza and other psycho shit every weekend. Funny story: The only time Ben ever really got mad at me was when I wanted to put guy vs. guy Ultimate Surrender videos in our Ultimate Surrender post. I told him gender equality demanded we do that but he remained unconvinced. For real though, outside of the ring girl galleries, Ben Goldstein is the classiest guy in MMA. Working with him has been a dream. Thanks for everything, Ben.

I’d also like to thank the rest of the CagePotato crew, all the readers, and all of CagePotato’s twitter followers. Thanks to anyone who believed in me as well.

Goodnight, MMA. I still can’t believe this is it.

Hunt vs. Nelson: Woefully Incomplete Video Highlights


(The video is so shitty the embed code wouldn’t even work in our CMS. So instead here’s a link to the video and a picture of a bro-hug. / Photo via Getty.)

You know what’s bullshit?

When a website promises “full fight video highlights” and offers so much less than that.

We present to you these headlines:

Mark Hunt vs. Roy Nelson Full Fight Video Highlights.

UFC Fight Night: Hunt vs. Nelson Full Fight Video Highlights.

Video: Mark Hunt vs. Roy Nelson Fight Video Highlights from UFC Fight Night 52.

Mark Hunt vs. Roy Nelson Fight Video Highlights.

Watch the video we linked above and tell us those headlines are accurate.


(The video is so shitty the embed code wouldn’t even work in our CMS. So instead here’s a link to the video and a picture of a bro-hug. / Photo via Getty.)

You know what’s bullshit?

When a website promises “full fight video highlights” and offers so much less than that.

We present to you these headlines:

Mark Hunt vs. Roy Nelson Full Fight Video Highlights.

UFC Fight Night: Hunt vs. Nelson Full Fight Video Highlights.

Video: Mark Hunt vs. Roy Nelson Fight Video Highlights from UFC Fight Night 52.

Mark Hunt vs. Roy Nelson Fight Video Highlights.

Watch the video we linked above and tell us those headlines are accurate. Yeah they’re kind of accurate. Mark Hunt is in the video. Roy Nelson is in the video, too. There’s some face punching. Then some anchor is like “oh yeah and there was a knockout.” Umm, maybe SHOW US the knockout? Because if you don’t show us the end of the fight, it’s not really a video highlighting the “full fight,” is it? It’s a video without the most important part of the fight.

Look, we’re not upset about the SEO. We GET IT. As a mid-tier MMA blog that lacks press credentials, we understand the drive to generate clicks better than most. We’ve arguably done some questionable or sordid things for the almighty page view, but never anything quite this insulting. As we put it on Twitter last night, people crap on CagePotato for being sub-legit, but at least we never straight-up LIE to people.

The above headlines are pretty much lies.

Something like “Hunt vs. Nelson Full Fight Video Highlights: Not the Part You Care About, But Please Click Anyway,” would better describe the video in question.

We’d love to be rebellious show you the actual highlight of the fight via GIFs and Vines, but Zuffa’s lawyers are among our most avid readers. So instead we posted a link to the “full fight highlights” video at the top. It’s a video lacking the only part of the fight you really want to see: The knockout. You’ll have to order Fight Pass if you want to see the full thing. Or, you know, hunt down an illegal GIF somewhere on the Internet. I’m sure that’ll be really difficult to do…

Since we can’t show you a UFC knockout, how about we post an actual important highlight from Bellator 125‘s main event featuring Melvin Manhoef:

That’s what a highlight looks like, MMA media. Let’s stick to informing readers rather than blatantly misleading them for a few pathetic clicks.

NBD, But CagePotato Was Just Quoted By THE F*CKING NEW YORKER


(This glorious occasion calls for only the most glorious of gifs, so take it away, Howard Dean.)

So recently, The New Yorker ran a profile on women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey, entitled, “Mean Girl: Why the world’s best female fighter loves to be hated.” Among the topics covered were Rousey’s weight-cutting routine/diet, her rise to prominence in MMA, her budding film career, and her infamous snubbing of Miesha Tate following their rematch at UFC 168. It hit on most of the notes we’ve come to expect in an article about Rousey — she’s confident bordering on crazy, she’s both beauty and the beast (#nailedit), etc. — but perhaps most interesting about The New Yorker’s profile of Rousey was the sources that the author, Kelefa Sanneh, chose to reference.

Being the classy publication that The New Yorker is, one might assume that they would pull their quotes about Rousey from respected, credentialed members of the MMA media, like Old Dad or Ariel Helwani, or better yet, forgo the cheap, bottom-barrel ramblings of online media in general to quote something from the actual printed press, right?

HAHA NOPE THEY ONLY QUOTED US. (*phones D. White, tells him to bite my bird*)

The above selection, taken from the second paragraph of the piece (a highly underrated paragraph in any article, IMO), quotes not only our Hot Potato gallery of Rousey from back in 2011, but this article published just last May. Checkmate, other MMA blogs. Check. Mate.

Let it be written that on this day, validation was spelled C-A-G-E-P-O-T-A-T-O.

After the jump: A few more interesting takeaways from The New Yorker’s profile of Rousey, and Dana White’s ongoing efforts to bury his former fighters.


(This glorious occasion calls for only the most glorious of gifs, so take it away, Howard Dean.)

So recently, The New Yorker ran a profile on women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey, entitled, “Mean Girl: Why the world’s best female fighter loves to be hated.” Among the topics covered were Rousey’s weight-cutting routine/diet, her rise to prominence in MMA, her budding film career, and her infamous snubbing of Miesha Tate following their rematch at UFC 168. It hit on most of the notes we’ve come to expect in an article about Rousey — she’s confident bordering on crazy, she’s both beauty and the beast (#nailedit), etc. — but perhaps most interesting about The New Yorker’s profile of Rousey was the sources that the author, Kelefa Sanneh, chose to reference.

Being the classy publication that The New Yorker is, one might assume that they would pull their quotes about Rousey from respected, credentialed members of the MMA media, like Old Dad or Ariel Helwani, or better yet, forgo the cheap, bottom-barrel ramblings of online media in general to quote something from the actual printed press, right?

HAHA NOPE THEY ONLY QUOTED US. (*phones D. White, tells him to bite my bird*)

The above selection, taken from the second paragraph of the piece (a highly underrated paragraph in any article, IMO), quotes not only our Hot Potato gallery of Rousey from back in 2011, but this article published just last May. Checkmate, other MMA blogs. Check. Mate.

Let it be written that on this day, validation was spelled C-A-G-E-P-O-T-A-T-O.

Another interesting moment from The New Yorker’s profile of Rousey came when the Olympic judoka was asked to speak on the subject of fighter pay, a topic that she largely has been able to avoid thus far in her UFC career. Since signing with the UFC, Rousey has made around 60k/60k per fight, which, while being leagues above most of her female counterparts, doesn’t exactly reflect that she is “the biggest star” the UFC has ever had.

According to Rousey, however, her current pay rate is nothing worth complaining about at all, because she’ll just continue kicking ass until that figure rises exponentially.

I’m not going to throw a fit over a little bit of money now, when I feel like letting that slide and just putting out good performances will pay off way more in the future.

It should be noted that the UFC bought Rousey a BMW X6 M (or roughly one and a half Jon Fitchs) upon signing her, which is a bonus not likely doled out to 99.9% of their roster.

A few other takeaways:

– Rousey was choked out by her umbilical cord during birth, which “deprived her of oxygen long enough to damage her brain,” and didn’t speak her first full sentence until the age of six.

– Rousey once fractured her Mom’s wrist during a workout. AnnMaria didn’t inform her of this until years later, after they had stopped training together.

– Rousey considered training for the 2012 Games, but eventually came to the conclusion that “four years of misery” wasn’t worth “ten grand and a handshake.” YEAH, AND ALL THE PRIMO, MIND-BLOWING SEX YOU CAN HAVE.

– While in Dublin for Fight Night 46, Dana White declared that Rousey is “the greatest athlete I’ve ever worked with on every level.” His decision to add “because fuck GSP” was later stricken from the record (not really, but he all but said it with that quote).

So Nation, is this our greatest moment since being plugged on FX’s “Lights Out”? Does it signal that a forced apology from Dana White is surely on the way, along with the righteous restoration of our press credentials? Probably not, but stay tuned to find out!

–J. Jones

The Unsupportable Opinion: MMA/The UFC Is NOT Slowly Swirling Down the Shitter


(MMA’s heyday, according to at least one guy.)

“The night is always darkest before the dawn.” — Two-Face, quoting Plato or some shit.

MMA is facing a crisis, Nation. Or so we’re being told. Not one of irrelevance, a lack of funding, or societal ignorance like it faced during the so-called “Dark Ages,” but one of complacency, of apathy. Over the past several years, we have seen the sport rise to a level of popularity we previously thought unattainable. With more major network deals, cross-promotion with major brands, and movies featuring UFC stars popping up by the day, it’s hard to argue that MMA is exactly struggling to generate interest amongst fans.

But somewhere between the death of Strikeforce and the Fight Pass subscriptions, MMA (or at least, its premiere organization) reached a tipping point. Despite an ever-burgeoning roster, the quality of the average card started to slip. Viewership began to decline. Truly “stacked” cards started to come further and further between, as did the number of marketable stars present on them.

While the UFC was busy making efforts to dominate the fucking world, its stateside presence slowly began to diminish with each lackluster “Fight Night” card, the majority of which have been spread across three channels and subscriptions-only networks. It isn’t helping that the UFC is now nickel and diming those of us hoping to watch their international events and prelims, adding to the growing “UFC is in trouble” sentiment among fans. The UFC has gotten greedy, and our view of the sport has slowly begun to shift from optimistic to apathetic as a result.

Is it simply a case of the UFC expanding too fast and oversaturating it’s niche market, as many followers of the sport will tell you? Or have fans simply lost interest in the sport now that it has become a globally recognized, increasingly expensive commodity?

Actually, the answer is a firm “no” to both of those questions. MMA is NOT rapidly descending into the watered-down, passionless, corporate-sponsored hellscape we all think it is, and everyone needs to man (or woman) the fuck up and stop acting like the sport is a lost cause.


(MMA’s heyday, according to at least one guy.)

“The night is always darkest before the dawn.” — Two-Face, quoting Plato or some shit.

MMA is facing a crisis, Nation. Or so we’re being told. Not one of irrelevance, a lack of funding, or societal ignorance like it faced during the so-called “Dark Ages,” but one of complacency, of apathy. Over the past several years, we have seen the sport rise to a level of popularity we previously thought unattainable. With more major network deals, cross-promotion with major brands, and movies featuring UFC stars popping up by the day, it’s hard to argue that MMA is exactly struggling to generate interest amongst fans.

But somewhere between the death of Strikeforce and the Fight Pass subscriptions, MMA (or at least, its premiere organization) reached a tipping point. Despite an ever-burgeoning roster, the quality of the average card started to slip. Viewership began to decline. Truly “stacked” cards started to come further and further between, as did the number of marketable stars present on them.

While the UFC was busy making efforts to dominate the fucking world, its stateside presence slowly began to diminish with each lackluster “Fight Night” card, the majority of which have been spread across three channels and subscriptions-only networks. It isn’t helping that the UFC is now nickel and diming those of us hoping to watch their international events and prelims, adding to the growing “UFC is in trouble” sentiment among fans. The UFC has gotten greedy, and our view of the sport has slowly begun to shift from optimistic to apathetic as a result.

Is it simply a case of the UFC expanding too fast and oversaturating it’s niche market, as many followers of the sport will tell you? Or have fans simply lost interest in the sport now that it has become a globally recognized, increasingly expensive commodity?

Actually, the answer is a firm “no” to both of those questions. MMA is NOT rapidly descending into the watered-down, passionless, corporate-sponsored hellscape we all think it is, and everyone needs to man (or woman) the fuck up and stop acting like the sport is a lost cause.

As CP reader Mike Grant asked us in a somewhat heated email (entitled “Screw you guys”):

Is the UFC really ruining this sport so completely? I mean, I know that they seem to think they are short in the “marketable fighters” department, but I don’t think that’s true at all. Maybe if the UFC and the shills who cover it would get their heads out of Ronda Rousey’s ass for some fresh air, they would see they have an All-American champion (and a pretty fucking good guy) in Chris Weidman. What about Carlos Condit? He’s a fucking machine. I know he has lost to the top guys in his division but you cannot deny that he is the embodiment of will and toughness. Johny Hendricks is another good guy/soon-to-be-champion. He’s a family man and a great spokesperson for MMA.

Can you write something a bit more uplifting about the future of MMA?

And you know what, he’s right. True, it is becoming more and more expensive (not to mention time-consuming) to be a “diehard” fan of MMA/the UFC these days, and our recent headlines haven’t exactly been comforting to the average MMA fan. But not all is lost, Nation.

You say the UFC is failing to generate new stars? Johny Hendrick’s Reebok deal surely seems to dispute that. As does the first co-ed season of The Ultimate Fighter, TUF 20, and truly, the rise of women’s MMA in general. The UFC may not be pushing Jon Jones like they are Ronda Rousey, but he’s still a bonafide star among anyone who follows the sport. The same goes for Cain Velasquez, the face of Metro PCS, and Conor McGregor, Heineken’s latest brand rep and the star of his own upcoming feature-length RTE documentary.

And besides, major stars aren’t what drives the sport. They never have been. Great fights are what drives the sport, and thanks to the UFC’s (and Bellator’s, I guess) ever-expanding roster, the potential for witnessing amazing fights is at an all-time high. Question: What has been the most exciting card of 2014 so far? Did you say the TUF China Finale? Because the correct answer is the TUF China Finale, which featured fuck-all in terms of star power. As MMAFighting’s Dave Meltzer wrote:

The reality is before every UFC event, every consumer will decide, based on the lineup, whether the show is worth their time to either pay for, or watch for free. But a lineup that doesn’t look interesting can, and often is, a better show that a lineup that going in looks like it can’t miss.

The show was filled with unknown debuting fighters, including names only familiar to those who watched TUF China. Given that the show didn’t air anywhere in North America, and even those who were able to find it on the Internet had to watch a show mostly in Chinese, there wasn’t exactly a ground swell of interest in whether Wang Sai or Zhang Lipeng would win a UFC contract, let alone people salivating at the prospect of Kazuki Tokudome and Yui Chul Nam.

It ended up being UFC’s most entertaining show of a year that has had its share of lackluster nights. There were only eight fights, the least of any UFC show in recent memory. But there was nothing remotely close to a bad fight, and the presentation on Fight Pass, with no commercials except for UFC events and shows between fights, seemed to almost breeze by. And even the commercials were highlights on this night, in particular a lengthy preview to the upcoming TUF Brazil featuring Chael Sonnen and Wanderlei Silva. An edited version of that commercial on YouTube was at just under 1.3 million views over the next 48 hours.

While it’s undoubtedly true that MMA/the UFC will always need its Chuck Liddells and Anderson Silvas to really drive up fan interest and pay-per-view numbers, let’s not act like a few lackluster cards and minorly increased pay-per-view prices are the end of the world. The UFC has a long way to go before it reaches the level of the NBA or NFL, regardless of what Dana White tells you, and maybe I’m just being optimistic here, but I’d like to think that our hard-earned cash is helping build a brand and a sport we love until it can one day compete with those other sports through the same mediums, relatively free of charge. International TUF events and “Fight Night” cards are appetizers. They’re opening bands that get you excited for the main act. Whether you choose to indulge in them is entirely up to you, and most of the time, you can catch the highlights from said events (again, free of charge) through the all-encompassing power of the Internet within minutes of the events themselves.

Despite the sport’s immense rise over the years, there are still many kinks in need of being worked out. But if the Gilbert Melendez contract fiasco taught us anything, it’s that the UFC might not have the stronghold on the sport we once thought it did. MMA is here to stay, and where one organization drops the ball, the other will hopefully be there to pick it up. Entire divisions are being added to the UFC. Female fighters are not only headlining pay-per-views, but generating heaps of fan interest at the mere mention of a “huge announcement.” Previously unknown fighters among casual fans like Demetrious Johnson and Renan Barao are well on their way to becoming household names. It is an exciting, if transitional time to be an MMA fan to say the least.

So let’s all hold hands, take a deep breath, and repeat after me, “Everything is going to be fine. *MMA* is going to be fine.”

–J. Jones