Shill ‘Em All, Part 3: The “Almost Famous” Fanboys of the MMA Media

As part of the well-received (and continuing) “Shill ‘Em All” series on the MMA media, I wrote part 3 on the “Fanboys” who populate the MMA industry.

The most direct response to the article came, not from an MMA fighter, but boxer Paulie Malignaggi during a press conference to promote his upcoming bout with Zab Judah:

The media has always been inaccurate or overly critical of Malignaggi when it comes to his fragile hands and close/controversial decisions he’s dropped.

FightOpinion.com’s Zach Arnold dissected Malignaggi’s rant, and came up with things that fighters can do in order to support change like attending commission meetings or pushing back at the right time. Zach’s point is that any change in combat sports requires fighters and managers act as active participants who are involved in all issues across the board.

Would Malignaggi be so upset about bad judging or the biased media if he wasn’t a victim of either? The conclusion is obvious: people agitate for change when they have a problem; when problems don’t affect them, they don’t care.

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Finally, I talked about the Shill ‘Em All series, the MMA media and my book on the MMA Dude Bro Podcast. You can listen to it here.

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Shill ‘Em All, Part 2: The MMA Media’s Race to the Bottom

Wrote a widely popular sequel to “Shill ‘Em All: Why Ethical Journalism Is So Hard to Come By” called “Shill ‘Em All, Part 2: The MMA Media’s Race to the Bottom” for CagePotato.com.

Ideally, the relationship between professional sports organizations like the UFC and media members should be about interdependence, where both parties rely equally upon each other. In practice, many MMA media members and outlets often exist as the clingy, powerless co-dependent partners that put the needs of the UFC before the need for factual and accurate sports journalism…

(Read more here)

The reaction was almost unanimously positive. Those who cover boxing noted the similarities in promoter’s attempts to control the media. However, it should be said that boxing writers have tremendously more freedom to point out conflict-of-interests.

MaxBoxing.com writer Gabriel Montoya, for instance, was banned from Goldenboy boxing matches for composing satirical tweets. The term of his ban? Just two cards. MMA writers can measure their banishment from fights, PR lists, conference calls and other events over the span of multiple years.

Did two radio interviews to comment on the piece. One for Sportsnet 960 in Calgary with Peter Klein; the other for SiriusXM’s Fight Club (available to listen here).

There will be a part three to this series, so stay tuned!