Enough With the "No Wiki" Nonsense
Stop judging fighters and fight cards based on your unwillingness to do research outside of Wikipedia
When did Wikipedia pages become the measuring stick for whether fans and media should be paying attention to and familiarizing themselves with an individual fighter?
Heading into this past weekend’s fight card in Las Vegas, there was a lot of talk about the number of athletes on the card without Wikipedia pages and how that was a signifier of both the quality of the card and whom it was targeted towards.
Amongst the fighters without Wikipedia pages heading into Saturday night’s event at the UFC Apex included heavyweight prospects Chris Daukaus and Tom Aspinall, who had main card assignments against divisional stalwarts Aleksei Oleinik and Andrei Arlovski, respectively, and duelling middleweight upstarts Phillip Hawes and Nassourdine Imavov, who also competed on the main card.
Despite the fact that their names weren’t highlighted in blue, indicating a hyperlink to an individual page containing the finer details of their fighting careers (and perhaps some personal anecdotes), each of those four men had previously stepped into the Octagon and earned victories, and anyone that pays close attention to the sport should have known who they are, who they’ve beaten, and the upside each of them brings to the table.
Daukaus and Aspinall had each earned twin first-round stoppage wins last year to establish themselves as intriguing figures in the heavyweight division — a weight class where observers are always pleading for fresh names to emerge — and were facing battle-tested veterans.
Hawes was a highly regarded prospect when he first arrived in the sport eight years ago, when he was projected to be a world-beater before he’d beaten anyone of substance, and had finally reach a point where he was putting his considerable skills and talents together in a way that might allow him to reach those lofty heights many were quick to forecast him to reach right out of the chute.
His dance partner, Imavov, was the least known of the four — a French middleweight with only a single UFC appearance — however he scored a quality win over a good opponent last fall, and combined with the fact that he trains out of the top gym in France (MMA Factory) and was someone prospect watchers were high on, he should have been on peoples’ radars.
The fact that lacking a Wikipedia page was reason enough to dismiss these competitors (and the various others in a similar position) or even diminish the value of this fight card feels like an offshoot of how we got to the end of last year with people writing all kinds of “Deiveson Figueiredo: Fighter of the Year” stories that included some mention that he “came out of nowhere” or was someone “no one saw coming.”
No one comes out of nowhere.
Just because you weren’t paying close enough attention doesn’t mean they just materialized out of the ether; that’s not how it works.
Look, I’m happy to admit that some of this is sour grapes.
I’m someone that has a voracious appetite for this sport and as such, I comb through multiple resources to learn as much as I can about the men and women stepping into the Octagon each week.
In addition to skimming their social media accounts (Twitter and IG; I’m not “find them on Facebook” level of obsessive), I’ll venture down a Tapology rabbit hole or two, looking into the level of competition they faced on the way to the UFC, seeing if there are any familiar names, and occasionally playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon to see which established competitors I can connect them to in a couple of steps.
So when I see people at prominent sites downplaying cards like last weekend’s due to a lack of Wiki pages, it doesn’t sit right with me because it’s not like there aren’t a vast number of resources one can navigate to learn more about these mysterious men and women whose professional careers have not yet been transformed into Wikipedia entries.
Both of Daukaus and Aspinall’s first two UFC wins are available on Fight Pass, as are their last couple regional fights each. Hawes has an Ultimate Fighter appearance, two Contender Series bouts, and his promotional debut on the streaming platform, and Imavov’s win over Jordan Williams is there too.
Tapology has complete records for all four men, and the vast majority of the people they’ve fought along the way too. Sherdog does as well, and simply Googling their names brings up numerous links to previous interviews and news items, all of which could give you a quick picture of who these athletes are and what they’ve accomplished thus far.
Accessing that information isn’t hard — it just takes time and effort, but dismissing them because they don’t have Wikipedia pages is easier.
Fans get told, “These people clearly don’t matter because they don’t have Wikipedia pages” and emerging talents that people should rightfully be paying attention to continue to operate in the shadows.
Here’s what happens next:
Daukaus and Aspinall land in even more high profile fights because they’ve each pushed their UFC records to 3-0 with three straight first-round stoppage wins, and it’ll be solely the UFC’s fault that people aren’t familiar with these emerging heavyweights that just fought and finished two of the more tenured members of the heavyweight ranks on the main card because they didn’t do enough to promote them or make people care about them in their previous fights, as if pairing them off with Oleinik and Arlovski respectively wasn’t a big enough indication that you might want to pay closer attention to these two newcomers.
They’d both already earned a pair of first-round finishes and the promotion gave them prime real estate on a heavyweight-centric card, in the midst of an eight-week stretch with a ton of compelling heavyweight action on the schedule, against established, proven commodities; if all of that can be dismissed or overlooked because they don’t have goddamn Wikipedia pages, you need to re-evaluate your metrics for determining who to watch and who to ignore.
(Note: UFC.com also had interview features on each man, as well as including Daukaus in last week’s edition of Fighters You Should Know / Fighters on the Rise; Aspinall was featured in both series prior to each of his first two fights.)
Here’s the other part of why this always irks me:
Manel Kape doesn't have a Wikipedia page and everyone was well aware of his exploits and excited about his UFC debut nonetheless.
Mounir Lazzez remains without a Wikipedia page, but that didn’t stop anyone from getting onboard the bandwagon last year when he beat Abdul Razak Alhassan before abandoning ship when he got trounced by “Weed Is Bad” Warlley Alves.
Kyler Phillips trains with a really great collection of fighters and coaches, has competed on both The Ultimate Fighter and the Contenders Series, and is already 2-0 in the UFC, but doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. He fights Song Yadong next month and if his lack of a Wiki entry means more to you than his record, pedigree and the caliber of opponent he’s facing next, I genuinely don’t know what to say.
Citing the number of fighters lacking Wikipedia pages on a given card feels like code to me for “I don’t know these people and can’t be bothered to find out more about them, so you shouldn’t bother either,” and let’s be honest: it’s not reserved for fighters without Wikipedia pages either.
There are lots of athletes that have Wikipedia entries that get the same treatment, which is how we end up with media members wanting to argue that Zhang Weili came out of nowhere prior to her championship win over Jessica Andrade.
For the record, Zhang fought Tecia Torres on the main card of a pay-per-view event with tandem championship fights before facing Andrade, beating the Top 10 fixture by unanimous decision for her third UFC victory and to earn her 19th consecutive win overall. How a fighter on a 19-fight winning streak with three UFC victories, including a decisive triumph over a tenured competitor like Torres can “come out of nowhere” is beyond me.
But again, “came out of nowhere” just feels like code for “I wasn’t paying attention and now I’m trying to find ways to justify why I know very little about this suddenly important figure,” which is why the UFC usually gets blamed for putting on too many shows with too many fights, making it hard for people to know who to pay attention to from week-to-week.
And it all just feels like such lazy bullshit to me.
Like I said earlier, some of it is sour grapes because there are people on larger platforms, with larger audiences, larger pay cheques and infinitely more recognition and influence than me that don’t appear to be interested in going beyond the Wikipedia listing for a given fight card when it comes to talking about these fights, and I absolutely hate it.
But it also feels like a disservice to the both the audience and the athletes themselves, and that gnaws at me too.
Rather than pass along knowledge and information about these Wiki-less fighters or their lesser-known contemporaries to the masses, folks slam cards for having too many fighters they’re not intimately familiar with and treat it like there are no compelling stories, no intriguing matchups, and very little of value on the card, turning people away rather than putting in the effort to educate themselves and others.
Of course, when one of those dismissed athletes strings together a handful of quality wins and lands a fight that is too big to ignore, they blame their lack of familiarity with that fighter on the UFC for keeping them buried on the prelims or not promoting them enough, even though they’ve already made two, three, four, five trips into the Octagon.
They get mad when Stephen A. Smith says some bullshit about women’s MMA, rushing to point out all the reasons he’s wrong and needs to stay in his lane, but won’t take the time to learn about the female newcomers making their debuts this weekend, relegating them to “never heard of them” and “this fight doesn’t matter anyways” status, waiting to be reactive should they do something special or pop with the audience instead of proactively showing interest.
We’re always a couple steps behind and playing catch-up in this sport aside from the few stunningly obvious, can’t-miss athletes that come along like Jon Jones and Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor. Everyone else has to be two-thirds of the way to title contention or stardom or both before some of these media personalities will start paying attention and giving them their due and it just continues to feed into this infinite loop of complaining about the lack of names, the lack of promotion, and the lack of opportunities for these men and women on the come-up when they didn’t give them any shine either.
People only really started checking for Belal Muhammad after his last win over Dhiego Lima, when he pushed his winning streak to four and his record to 8-1 in his last nine fights. Now that he’s stepped up to face Leon Edwards on short notice — doing literally what he told me he wanted to do before he stepped into the Octagon with Lima at UFC 258 — everyone is rushing to heap praise on him for being an unheralded standout more folks should have been watching.
He’s been that for a while now; thanks for catching up.
On a more macro level, these men and women bust their asses to reach this level and then have to hear some of the most prominent voices covering the sport dismiss them as unimportant or inconsequential, even when they’ve already proven they not only belong, but have the potential to thrive, just because they don’t have a goddamn Wikipedia page.
This can’t be the best we can do.
I get it — it’s hard to stay on top of all the changes, all the new arrivals, all the different names stepping into the Octagon week-after-week-after-week without pause, especially when everyone is still dealing with a host of unexpected challenges and circumstances created by COVID.
So say that.
Say, “I’m overwhelmed right now and don’t have the opportunity to know more about Chris Daukaus or Tom Aspinall” and ask someone with that knowledge and information to fill you in; I’m sure Twitter would point you in the right direction.
Say, “I’m mostly focused on the marquee names and would like to hear more from others about some of these emerging talents I’m unfamiliar with,” and let the host of maniacal consumers of this stuff regale you with the wealth of information and analysis they’ve compiled about those fighters, and then help amplify their voices.
Or say, “I only want to focus on the biggest names and the biggest stories” because that’s what many of the most prominent voices covering other sports do all the time and no one has any real issue with it.
But don’t cast these men and women as unimportant or not worth knowing because you don’t know anything about them and don’t have the time, energy, or interest in changing that.
Don’t present it as if their fights don’t matter simply because they don’t matter to you.
Don’t lay the blame for your lack of effort into learning more about these fighters at the feet of the UFC, as if the only way to find out anything about athletes stepping into the Octagon and working their way up the ranks is to be spoon-fed knowledge by the promotion. Besides, the promotion gives you plenty of information about these athletes every week already, so either you’re not consuming it or there is something more you feel is missing. Which is it?
And this isn’t about patting myself on the back for the depth of knowledge I have because there are a bunch of people out there who are even more knowledgeable than me, people I lean on week-to-week for more information and insights. It’s not about “defending” the UFC either because I’d be saying these same damn things whether I had a byline at UFC.com or not.
Because it’s ultimately about covering this sport and these athletes better.
It’s about being proactive in telling their stories and elevating their profiles, rather than being reactive and trying to get everyone interested when they’re one step away from contention or already in the midst of their breakthrough.
It’s about widening the lens and letting fans know there are more than a handful of fighters who “matter” and that this preliminary card fight on Saturday is the type of bout that doesn’t have immediate divisional significance, but could have a ripple effect on how things shake out three, four, five months down the road.
It’s about covering the sport in its totality, from all angles, rather than reducing it to the biggest names and most immediately impactful fights only.
Thankfully there is a happy ending to all this: Daukaus, Aspinall, and Darrick Minner all got Wikipedia pages following their victories on Saturday night, so at least now they’re no longer considered inconsequential nobodies that no one should bother paying attention to heading into their next fights.
Congrats gents — all it took was a combined eight straight wins inside the Octagon!