My Week in Words: April 29-May 5, 2023
A look at all the content I delivered in the last seven days
My Week in Words was a concept I first came up with for my Twitter feed — a way to roll out links to all the content I had produced in the previous seven days, heading into a given event; a thread of links that followers and those connected to my timeline could comb through, check out, and enjoy as they readied for the action to hit the Octagon later that day.
That briefly morphed into a Revue newsletter, before Revue tanked and Twitter was sold to a moron. For a couple months at the end of last year, a baby version of MWIW existed at Severe MMA as The Saturday Setup, where I compiled all the UFC content we’d created that week and rolled it out as a primer for what would transpire later in the day. I pulled the plug on that because outside of pay-per-view shows where I could include the staff picks, it was just a collection of the videos I had made and the Preview Show, and it felt like propping myself up in a place where I always worried about stepping on toes and seemingly like I was trying to grab the spotlight for myself… even though the numbers those shows delivered suggested people weren’t particularly interested.
But now I’m back here, with no toes to worry about and genuinely unconcerned about traffic numbers because I just like putting this stuff out there and the dozen or so people that consume just about everything I do really seem to like it and that’s honestly all that matters.
Plus, I want to have an archive of my work that I can quickly jumped back to in order to find pieces and features and videos I made in the future, and this is a fun version of that, while also serving as a primer for today’s fights.
So here we go: My Week in Words from April 29 to May 6, 2023.
UFC Vegas 62 Recaps: I genuinely love doing recaps, which is another one of those things that makes me an outlier in this industry because from my experience, most people hate it. But the way my brain works, writing up a recap of how a given fight transpires imprints that fight in my memory, which means when it’s time to recall what happened in Marcus McGhee’s last fight, I have his submission win etched in my memory for easy access.
The 10 Most Anticipated Fights in May: it’s been a number of years now since I started writing The 10, which serves as an umbrella title for lists I produce on the UFC website, but began in this fashion, as a look at the fights I was most excited to see in the coming month. It’s not only a chance to set the table for the month ahead’s biggest fights, but I always sneak in one or two “Spencer Fights” that are slightly off the radar, but get me excited as well.
The Monthly Report, April 2023: a new addition to my monthly production on the UFC website, we started this one at the end of January as a way to reflect on some of the top performances and performers from the previous month, which also means — at least to me — that it serves as a running tally of fights, fighters, and finishes to consider in the annual awards races. I keep track of all that stuff on a spreadsheet, on my own, because I’m a colossal dork, but now I get to share a little of that darkness with the world.
Coach Conversation — Sterling vs. Cejudo: I love this series because it means that ahead of every pay-per-view, I get to jump on the phone with two or three coaches I respect a great deal and talk details of an upcoming fight. For UFC 288, that meant sitting down with Tyson Chartier of the New England Cartel and Eliot Marshall of Easton Training Centers to discuss the ins and outs of Saturday’s fascinating bantamweight title fight between Aljamain Sterling and Henry Cejudo.
UFC 288 Fight-By-Fight Preview: so one of the reasons you always hear me advocating for every fight having value and every matchup being a chance to learn something about the combatants is because ahead of every fight card, I put together the Fight-By-Fight Preview, and in doing so, I find little angles, little points of interest from each fight that I think make them worth watching. Additionally, for all the people that say the UFC needs to do a better job highlighting more fighters, telling fans why certain fights matter, this is literally what I do each and every week, in not only this series, but the following one as well.
UFC 288 Fighters on the Rise: the first event I penned this series for — if memory serves me — was UFC Fight Night: Gonzaga vs. Cro Cop 2 in Krakow, Poland on April 11, 2015. So for the last eight years and change, I’ve sat down and told anyone that took the time to read that week’s offering about three competitors poised to step into the Octagon that weekend that were either promotional newcomers they should check out, emerging talents flying under the radar, or surging contenders that still hadn’t gotten their due.
Off the top of my head, I think Jon Jones, Aljamain Sterling, and Amanda Nunes are the only three champions that didn’t pass through the series, but I could be wrong about the last two of those.
Aljamain Sterling Interview: it was great sitting down and discussing legacy and the surreal elements of being on the cusp of defending the bantamweight title again with Aljo ahead of today’s main event. We’ve spoken throughout his career, and it’s always cool seeing how an athlete’s thoughts and impressions shift over the years — what takes prominence, what motivates them, how much or how little they reflect on what they’ve done.
I’m always grateful for the time these athletes afford me, and it’s even better when they’re as open, thoughtful, and genuine as Sterling was here.
Belal Muhammad Interview: this one was extra cool because Belal and I sat down for an interview ahead of his fight with Dhiego Lima a few years back, and at the time, he detailed his plans to do whatever it took to work his way up the divisional ladder and into title contention… and now here he is, fighting to earn a championship opportunity.
Like Sterling, Muhammad was candid, earnest, and introspective about things, and my hope is that those elements are conveyed in the feature.
Gilbert Burns Interview: this was one of my favourite interviews in recent memory because Burns didn’t hedge when it came to talking about his reasons for taking this short-notice fight with Muhammad, the challenges of being out of action for too long, and the risks that come with rolling the dice in a fight like today five-round co-main event. It was the most straightforward a competitor has been not only in explaining their own position, but in correctly detailing how these divisions work, and I enjoyed every second of discussing it all with “Durinho” for this piece.
Kron Gracie Interview: any time I can talk about my dog in an interview is a win for me, so connecting with Gracie on feeding or dogs a raw food diet and the costs that come with it was cool. He’s not someone that likes to talk too much, and he’s been getting asked a lot of the same questions for most of his life, so I get why he’s guarded and not particularly engaging with this stuff, but I still think I was able to pull some thoughts from him and frame up a story that tells you who he is, where he’s at, and what to expect when he steps in with Charles Jourdain in the UFC 288 main card opener.
The Return of Keyboard Kimura
This week also marked the relaunch of this here newsletter and the content that originated here before migrating to Severe.
I went a little lighter this week because I wanted to come back focused on UFC 288 and not drop some random stuff out of the blue on last weekend’s show, so there were only four videos this week — One Question, 10 Things, Punch Drunk Predictions, and the Betting Show — but there will be additional offerings each week as we move forward.
The Next Day Takeaways will return tomorrow, though I’ll be flying solo.
The Keyboard Kimura Podcast will run every Monday and then whenever else I want to tap in and talk about something.
A Conversation With will air on Tuesdays, featuring me sitting down with fighters, coaches, journalists and more to discuss their foray into their given field, their connection to combat sports, and a whole lot more.
Enjoy this week’s videos, check out some of the links, and see you back here next Saturday morning!
ESK